The Favour
by RaiRoRa
Summary: What happens if you lose a bet to a hitman? Nothing good, that's what.
1. Chapter 1

At the door he sank to the ground. The hallway was quiet; he could hear the faint sound of a TV coming from inside one of the apartments. He checked to see if he'd left a trail of blood - one or two spots, a streak on the wall at the elevator. The hallway was dark, low-lit by small ceiling lights. If he was lucky, no one would come out of their apartment and see him there, lying in a bloody heap in the doorway of 5C – but it was after 3 a.m. He might be lucky.

He knocked softly, two, three times, but there was no answer. He closed his eyes for a moment and felt a wave of dizziness wash over him. When he opened them again, he cradled his useless arm in his lap and knocked once more. There was silence but he knew she was behind the door, gun in hand, on the tips of her toes, poised for fight or flight.  
"Quinn," he whispered. "It's me, John. John Wick."  
She whipped the door open and jammed her gun against his temple.  
"What the eff?" she hissed. "Ah, for f- . Get in. Get _in_."  
"It's clear," he whispered as she peered cautiously into the hall. "But there's blood."  
He crawled into her hallway and leaned against the wall, resting his head against the wood panelling. She ran back inside, returned silently with a cloth in hand, and swiftly jumped over his prone body.  
"Don't move. And don't effing bleed on my rug," she said softly. She turned in the doorway and yanked the rug out from underneath him, throwing it out of his reach. Just in case.

He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, she was bending over him.  
"Move," she said. She half-pushed, half-kicked him inside so she could close the door, then helped him to his feet. She'd noticed his arm, the dislocated shoulder. She'd also taken note of the blood and he knew she had quickly assessed his personal armoury.  
"Lovely," she spat. "Just freaking _lovely_."  
He didn't know whether she was referring to the blood on her white woodwork or the situation in general. She bent to swoosh the stain with her cloth, muttering under her breath. She wasn't wearing pyjamas, but some kind of black yoga pants and t-shirt. She'd always gone to bed in clothes she could fight in; some things hadn't changed.

John looked down at his own clothes: his shirt was splattered in blood, a lot of blood, a lot of different bloods. His black pants showed no stains but were stickily wet to the touch, he'd left bloodstains on the hall floor where he'd slumped. He pointed them out silently and she heaved a martyred sigh, and then wiped the floorboards as well. She looked different. He hadn't seen her for – ten years? Twelve? He tried to think, but the pain was a dull pulse that made calculating hard. The last time he'd seen her was at the Continental in Barcelona. She'd been with Pfeiffer then, a happy couple: sitting at the bar with her long dark hair tumbling down her back – the only time he'd ever seen her hair loose, not braided and tied back in business-like severity. She'd been wearing a deep blue dress, something sparkly, and was laughing at some joke Pfeiffer was telling. She'd acknowledged him with the barest of nods and he'd returned it, then she'd turned her back on him and returned to the conversation.

They'd trained together and they used to be paired up a lot when they both worked for The Agency: similar working style, similar working ethos, despite having dissimilar personalities and tastes so far apart that they rarely managed to agree on anything that was not work related. Then they'd been assigned different jobs, gone their separate ways. They both discovered they liked working alone – but on the rare occasion their paths crossed, they were careful to skirt each other, keep out of each other's line of fire, metaphorically and literally. She'd taken a bullet for him near Philadelphia, yelping "John!" to distract a shooter, who'd then turned his gun on her. After John had taken the man out, he called a driver, leaving a gold coin in Quinn's bleeding hand so her carriage to the doctor would be paid.

Now her hair was chopped short and blond, her face was softer – she wasn't wearing the heavy eyeliner and dark lipstick she used to favour when she was a professional – but she was still wiry. He knew she probably still worked out every day, knew she probably had a boxing sack somewhere in the apartment that she beat the crap out of on a regular basis. She looked him up and down, shaking her head slowly. Clearly she did not think as highly of his current appearance as he thought of hers.

With vicious ill-grace, she flung the bloody cloth through the open door of her kitchen, striking the tiles behind the kitchen sink before it fell in on top of a small pile of dishes, a neat slam-dunk. She picked up her gun and motioned for him to go down the small hallway and into her living room.  
"What are you doing here?" she said evenly, levelling the gun at him.  
"I need your help," he said.  
"I've retired," she said. "How the eff do you even effing know where I effing live? No one knows my new name and address, that was the agreement. Who the eff did you eff to get the effing information?"  
Despite himself, he smiled. "I was counting on the bet still being on," he said softly.  
She ignored him. "Who told you where I live?" she demanded.  
"Marcus," he said.  
"I'll kill him," she said. "I'll effing kill him."  
John closed his eyes. Briefly. For a second.  
"He's dead," he said.  
That stopped her. The gun didn't waver, she just narrowed her eyes, watching him.  
"It's true," John said. "But he told me all about you. He told me you were an elementary school teacher now. Teaching little kids how to read and write. Miss Grady, Miss Eileen Grady. And he gave me your address, just in case. Kind of like an insurance policy, in case anything should go wrong."  
"Well, that was his mistake, John Wick. He should've known that _out_ means _out_. I've spent the last eight years going to college and getting my degree and my work experience and a job – and, yes, I teach little kids to read and write and be nice to each other and use words, not violence, to solve their little fights. Ironic, huh? But that's who I am now, so I'm truly sorry you took a beating, honey, but I'm calling you a driver. I'll even stick a shiny gold coin in your little hand so you'll be sure to get to someone who'll fix you up _reeeeeeal_ nice."  
She smiled her tight, mirthless smile. The gun stayed steady.

"Anna," he said. "I need your help."  
"I don't want to help you, Johnny," she said, knowing he hated when she called him that.  
He reached into his jacket and she jerked the gun in warning.  
"My wallet," he whispered and withdrew it. He put it on the table and used his good hand to find the piece of paper that he always carried with him, just in case. His insurance certificate.  
"Recognise this?" He read it out: " _I, John Wick, do hereby bet that Miss Anna Quinn cannot refrain from cursing in my presence,_ – yeah, we even listed the words that count as curses, including some of your more creative attempts like stinktwizzler or twatweasel – _a challenge she herewith accepts. Should she curse in my proximity, even under duress, she shall owe me A Favour, to be redeemed at my convenience. Signed: John Wick, Anna Quinn._ Witnessed by Marcus and Mr Black, your thumbprint in blood, even. You were very melodramatic back then."  
He held up the piece of paper, a bit tatty and worn from being in his wallet. "You signed it, we shook on it."  
"We were kids," she said quickly. "It was a stupid bet. I only did it to shut you up. God, you were really prissy when it came to language. How sad are you - still carrying that thing around?"  
"You couldn't say a sentence without a _fuck_ in it," he countered. He closed his eyes. The pain.  
"I'm calling you a driver," she said. "I'm not having you bleeding out on my floors. I just got them effing sanded last summer, man."  
"You always said that you honour your bets," he said. "And you still honour this one. You haven't cursed once around me yet."  
"Don't be effing ridiculous. I'm an elementary school teacher," she snapped. "Remember? We don't effing curse."

Keeping the gun trained on him, she pulled open a drawer and withdrew a mobile phone. She tapped in the key code to unlock it. John took a breath and continued quickly,  
"Quinn," he said urgently, "I've left a trail of blood all the way here."  
She was scrolling through the contacts list, looking for the switchboard number.  
"It won't be long before they find me."  
He heard the beep-beep-beep as the number connected.  
"Who's they?" she said quietly.  
"Miss Knight. The Aimes brothers."  
She punched screen with her thumb to disconnect the call, pounced at him, shoving the gun against his dislocated shoulder. He winced.  
"What the fuck, John Wick?" she hissed in his ear. "The _Aimes_ brothers? In my fucking apartment?"  
A heartbeat.  
"No," he admitted. "I lied. But I win the bet and I'm redeeming my favour now."  
She clapped her hand over her mouth.  
"You fucking bastard," she gasped. "You motherfu- "  
She proceeded to call him every name on their list.  
Plus a few more, for good measure.

It took him ten minutes to convince her that the Aimes brothers weren't going to storm her apartment. Not straight away, at least.  
"But they _are_ coming for you?" she said, moving a curtain aside a fraction. The lights were off, the curtains drawn completely, revealing not a crack.  
"They're coming for me, but it's going to take them some time to find me. They'll check out the doctor, the Continental, any known contacts. They'll know I need medical help. Eventually, they will find you, Annie."  
"I preferred it when you called me Miss Quinn," she said sharply. She removed a second handgun from underneath her sideboard, checked it and laid it on the table beside the first.  
"We're safe," he said. "For now."  
"Why did you come to me, John?" she said. It came out almost like a wail and not for the first time, he felt sorry. He knew how it felt to be ripped out of a new life and shoved back into your old one.  
"Because I can trust you. Because you're good. Because you can fix this," he said, indicating his arm.  
"Is it the same one?" she asked.  
He nodded. "It pops now and again."  
She sighed.  
"Take off your jacket and shirt," she said. "I don't want to touch all of – " she waved a finger, indicating the bloody mess "– that."  
He did so.  
"You'd better lie down," she said. "I haven't done this in a while and it's easiest if you're lying down."  
She took a blanket off the back of the sofa and threw it over the cushions. Gingerly, he lay down.  
"Nice sofa," he remarked. It was deep purple, the cushions petrol blue, grass green. Typically Quinn, the apartment was full of stuff: prints, paintings, books, clutter. Bold colours, bright prints. He felt faint; it might have been the pain, but it could've been the décor.

She closed her eyes, held his arm and elbow… and pushed the shoulder back in.  
John bit back a yell.  
"Thanks," he said, moving it carefully. It was in the socket.  
"Ice and painkillers," she replied curtly. "Then take a shower. Woe betide you if you've stained my couch."  
"Thanks," he said again. She helped him up, showed him silently to the bathroom and gave him a small pile of towels.  
"You can stay here tonight," she said. "I'll give you clothes and a gun and you'd better be gone before I get up for breakfast. You're damned lucky this is not a school night."  
"That's all I wanted," he said. "Favour redeemed."  
She snorted. "I effing hate you, John Wick."  
He smiled.  
"Force of habit," she said. "But don't worry, I'm sure I'll get used to calling you an stinktwizzler again."


	2. Chapter 2

"Thank you, Seth," she said and took the suit bag off him. He tried to peer over her shoulder, down the corridor.  
"Um, is he okay? Has he been to see a doctor?"  
"He's fine, really. Just a bit shook up. First time in New York and he ends up getting mugged. Sucks, right?"  
"Sure does." Seth put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it sympathetically. Anna tried not to shudder. She didn't like being touched, but Seth was one of those guys who liked to distribute sympathetic pats, squeezes, arm rubs. It skeeved her out. But he'd taken a subway over to her apartment with a spare suit at seven a.m. on a Saturday morning, ostensibly for her brother, who had a job interview downtown at nine. Who'd been viciously mugged and got his suit all ripped and torn, tsk, tsk, so unfortunate, _so_ upsetting.  
"Do you want me to come in and meet him?" Seth said. "Give him some advice about New York, guy to guy."  
Anna pretended to consider it.  
"Maybe later on," she said. "He's gonna be in a rush to get ready. Perhaps we can buy you coffee later as a thank-you?"  
Seth beamed and brushed his sandy hair back off his forehead.  
"Sounds good," he said brightly and bent to kiss her cheek. She steeled herself as his lips brushed her skin and stretched her lips into a smile.  
"Thanks, Seth," she said, shutting the door firmly in his face.

John was standing by the couch, gun in hand.

She tossed the garment bag on a chair.  
"Your underwear, tie, socks are hanging in the bathroom. I put them in the dryer for a bit, but they might be still a bit damp. The suit should fit you, Seth's about your size."  
"Is he your boyfriend?"  
"He's _a_ boyfriend. He's _the_ boyfriend closest in size to you."  
John unzipped the bag and looked inside. Dark grey suit, freshly laundered, one of the four or five Seth wore in rotation to the office.  
"It's probably not bespoke," Anna said mockingly. "I hope you can deal."  
John looked at her. He had a way of staring at her that made her squirm.  
"I can deal," he said in his quiet way.  
She handed him a shirt. He held it up.  
"Looks like one of mine," he said.  
"Yeah, it is yours. I stole it. For years …" she wrung her hands "For years … I used to sleep in it every night."  
His brown eyes widened in – what was it? Astonishment? Fear? Anna felt the corners of her mouth twitch.  
"No, of course not," she laughed. "I just packed it in with my stuff by mistake one time. I don't know why I kept it, I guess it was kind of like a memento of our work together, you know? And it was too effing expensive to give to Goodwill – knowing you, it was probably hand-sewn by blind nuns in Belgium or something."  
"Not quite, but thank you, Anna," he said earnestly. He was so earnest, so proper.  
"You're welcome, John," she said. "Go get dressed."  
While he was in the bathroom, she made the bed. She plumped up the pillow he'd slept on, careful to erase any sign that the bed had been shared by two. When he'd come out of the bathroom after the shower last night, wearing a pair of gym shorts and an old t-shirt that'd once belonged to Pfeiffer, she'd taped some of the worst wounds and passed him a small supply of painkillers. He was pretty battered and very tired. Even as she tried to find a way to affix an icepack to his shoulder, his eyes had started to fall shut, his head dipping slightly as he was pulled into sleep.  
"You need to rest," she said and he started to silently remove some of the throw pillows from the couch, preparing himself a bed.  
"John," she'd said. " _Puh-lease_."  
He looked at her, dark eyes inquiring.  
"We've slept in the same bed dozens of times," she said. "You're not spending the night on the couch."  
"It's not appropriate," he murmured.  
"John," she said warningly. "We spent a hundred nights in the same bed and nothing ever happened. Believe me, in the state you find yourself now, tonight is not going to be the night that changes. You look like a bum; I think I'll manage to keep my hands to myself."  
He allowed himself a wry smile.  
"Very well," he said.

They lay side by side in the bed. As was her habit, Anna rolled over to the edge, pulling the cover with her. Ineffectually, John tried to pull it back, succeeding only in pulling enough away to cover himself.  
"You haven't changed," he remarked.  
"I'm sleeping," she replied. He was silent.  
"Remember that hotel in Seattle?" he said.  
"I'm not reminiscing. You're not here, and I'm sleeping."  
More silence.  
"You're right. I apologise. Good night, Anna."  
She lay in the darkness for a few minutes, then turned to him.  
"You can sleep," she said. "I'll keep watch."  
He started to protest but she cut him off.  
"If I don't keep watch you won't sleep. We both know that, so go to sleep, man. I've got this."  
"Is there another way out?" he asked.  
She snorted. "Seriously, John? Really? What do you think?"  
"No back door, obviously so – fire escape? And this is the top floor, isn't it? Can you get up on to the roof?"  
"There's an attic. Trapdoor in the second bedroom – not much of a bedroom, just enough space for a closet, but that's New York for you, right? Pull it down, it has one of those built-in ladders. When you pull it up behind you, you'll see a bar on the floor. You can jam it through the lever so it can't be pulled down from below. There are three windows, the third opens onto a small ledge that connects us to the neighbouring building. Look for the rock on the window ledge if you need to smash it."  
She took a breath.  
"Now, sleep, John."  
She listened to him breathe.  
"John," she whispered finally. "I'm sorry about Helen."  
He said nothing, then whispered in return, "I'm sorry about Pfeiffer."  
In the darkness, the back of his hand brushed hers. Coming from him, it was as close to a hug as she would get.  
Anna was okay with that.

They ate breakfast at her living room table. She swept papers aside, a small pile of children's drawings. John picked one up.  
 _For Ms Grady from Anthony xxx_

was written on it in a small child's hand.  
"Another one of my boyfriends," she said with a grin. "His suits wouldn't fit you, though. Besides, the only suit he possesses is probably a Batman costume."  
"I could make that work," John said and she laughed. He grinned, pushing his hair behind his ear. His hair was much longer now – and the beard! She couldn't figure out whether she liked it or not. He looked kind of … scruffy. Aware she was staring at him, she ducked her head and poured some coffee.

They ate toast and drank coffee in silence. He'd tried to make small-talk, enquire about her job, but she wouldn't talk about it.  
"We both know it's best if I just pretend you're not here," she said and he acknowledged it with a nod. "Anyway," she said, sipping her coffee, "it's not like you to be so chatty, Johnny."  
"I guess I just haven't done much talking recently," he said. "Talking about normal stuff."  
She nodded. She'd heard he'd retired and she was dying to ask him what had happened, how he'd ended up outside her door in a quiet residential block on the Upper West Side in the early hours of a Saturday morning. But she didn't ask. It was going to take the best of her skills and ability to ensure that no one traced John Wick to her place, not now and not ever. The less she knew, the better.

Her kitchen clock hit 8.30 and she stood up. So did he.  
"Time to leave," she said. She handed him his guns, reloaded, and waited till he'd put them away.  
"I will take my leave of you then, Miss Quinn," he said in his oddly formal fashion.  
"Goodbye, Mr Wick," she said, leading him to the door. She looked out: no sign of life. The Levandowskis would already be out walking their dogs and Tim Myers worked the late shift. He watched TV till dawn, then slept till the afternoon.  
John stretched out his hand and she shook it.  
"Good luck," she said. "Take care."  
She didn't wait to hear his reply, just closed the door, sliding the deadlock firmly shut.

\- - - - - -  
She did her morning routine, stretching her muscles. She normally watched TV but this morning she was running through her head a list of possibilities: how likely was it that someone might find out that John had been here? How could she find out who was after him, without dipping a toe – without dipping as much as a toenail – into that cesspool again? Should she stay, preparing herself for a visit by some of The Agency's nasties, or should she go away for a few days till the coast was clear, pretend she'd never been there on the night in question? She ran through the checklist in her head – CCTV? She'd have to sort it, he can't be seen entering the building. Was the apartment secure? As secure as it could ever be. Was her bag packed, her flee-bag, if worst came to worst? She looked around: the small rucksack was underneath the table at the window, ready to be grabbed. Her therapist had said that the day she unpacked that bag would be the day she'd finally let go of her past. Anna didn't think she'd live to see that day. That bag would probably be buried with her, that bag would –

She heard a scuffle on the corridor and grabbed her gun. Her heart thump-thumped in time with the beat of adrenalin in her veins. A second passed, two, her body crouched into a familiar pose, poised and ready to go. She knew, instinctively, what was going on outside. There was a dull thud and a bang at the door.  
"Anna!" John shouted, "It's me. Open up!"  
""What the eff?" she hissed, flinging the door open. "Get _in_."  
John pushed past her, leaving another red streak on her clean white panelling.  
It was déjà vu of the worst possible kind. 


	3. Chapter 3

"Get him inside," John ordered. He slid to the window, flicked the curtain a half-inch aside.  
Anna dragged the man's body into the apartment.  
"No blood on the floor, please, no blood, no blood," she was muttering, like an incantation, pulling him with great effort into the living room. John didn't make a move to help her; Mr Black had held him back whenever they saw her physically struggle: her shortcomings were not his, he used to say to his student; she was smaller and weaker and she would have to make do.  
"There's no blood, I didn't shoot him," John said shortly. "You'll have to secure him, he's just stunned."  
He turned back to the window as she rolled the man over, grabbed a small backpack from under the window and extracted some cable ties and a roll of tape. She deftly bound his hands together, then climbed off him and tied his feet.  
"You'll be the death of me, John – " she began but he cut her off.  
"Get dressed," he said, "quickly."  
She opened her mouth to argue and shut it again, then started to strip: t-shirt, pants, socks, tossed on the bright red velvet chair that stood by the window. Stark naked, she dropped on the floor and felt around the underside of the sofa, pulling out a bag containing dark clothing.  
He looked at the ceiling, the floor, out the window, his hand gripping and ungripping the gun, while she ripped the bag open and rifled through its contents.  
"Quinn," he muttered, deeply uncomfortable.  
"Don't start, John," she snapped. "Don't be such an effing prude. You've seen my butt before, get over it."  
He looked out the window. It used to drive him mad – she had no sense of modesty. As soon as they got back to their hotel room after any job, she kicked the door behind her and started shedding clothes. He'd mumble grimly about how inappropriate it was, how they were work colleagues and it wasn't right that she should parade around naked, while she snapped and told him to get an effing life, if he couldn't cope with the sight of a naked human body he should just look away.

She appeared at his elbow, thankfully clothed. She was wearing her uniform: black jeans, a black rib-knit shirt, a light jacket covering the shoulder straps that held her guns.  
"What happened?" she asked.  
"I met him coming up the stairs, he knew immediately who I was and gave chase. So who else knows where you live, Anna?"  
"You, Marcus, Winston – I don't know who else. Winston arranged it, he organized the papers, the social security number, the apartment. Do you think - ?"  
"Winston wouldn't say anything."  
"Are you sure, John?"  
He shrugged. "I'm sure of nothing."

Anna sighed and rolled the man on the floor over with her foot, causing him to groan. He was short, not much taller than her, and a few years younger. Probably one of Winston's latest favourites, rising up through the ranks and entrusted with some of the more sensitive errands. She dropped to her knees and pressed his gun against his throat.  
"Who are you?" she said.  
The man moaned and spat some blood out.  
Anna shrieked, "My rug!" and thumped his thigh with her fist. He groaned again.  
"Who sent you?" John said coolly. "Who gave you this address?"  
"Winston," he whispered. "He sent me to warn you that John Wick would try to find you."  
"Too late," Anna said. "He found me."  
"He said to tell you that there's a contract on his head, it's gone up to fifteen million."  
Anna glanced at him, eyebrows raised in surprise. John just shrugged. It was what it was.  
"Did you tell Winston that you found him here?" she asked. The man on the floor hesitated a second, a fraction of a second and John cleared his throat.  
"Did you tell anyone else I was here?" he demanded.  
"No, man, I swear!"  
"Why were you chasing me then?" John asked and slowly cocked his gun. He levelled it at the man. "After you saw me on the stairs – who did you call?"  
The man on the floor gave a panicked gulp and rolled over so he could look at Anna.  
"They were going to find you anyway, Miss Quinn. They know all about you, your new life and everything. You're still in the database - it was only a matter of time, you know."

Anna looked at John, stricken. She knelt beside the man on the floor and poked him with her gun.  
"You'd better be fucking lying, sunshine."  
"I'm not. I figured they were going to him here anyway and even if they didn't, they'd probably get you first. I just thought I could, you know, get in on the action. I'm being honest, man."  
"You're a disloyal little shithead. Do you have any idea what Winston's going to do with you?"  
"Listen," the man said, raising his head as far as he could. "We could share it. Take him down, I'll help you get in touch with the right people to get you the reward. I've got contacts, good contacts, I swear."  
"You want me to shoot him? Seriously?"  
"Fifteen million, think what that will buy you, man. Take him down, you know you can."  
"I'm standing right _here_ ," John said, "I'm not deaf."  
"They're coming for him," the man implored, ignoring him. "They'll find you and they'll take you out first because they'll know you helped him. Kill him yourself, get the reward before someone else does. Hey, you don't even have to give me half, I'll take a third. A quarter, even."

John looked at her. Anna's head dipped to one side, as it did when she was thinking.  
"You can keep your life," the man said. "but a few million dollars richer. Just think about it."  
"I will," she said, standing up. "It's tempting, to be sure."  
"Miss Quinn," John said warningly, but he didn't raise his gun. She kept hers trained on the man at her feet.  
"Fifteen million," the man on the floor wheedled. "One shot."  
"What if he shoots me first?" Anna said. "He's pretty fast, you know. Then _you'll_ die straight after."  
"I figure I'm a dead man already," he said. "But the way I see it, everyone in this room is already dead right now, dead men walking. But you and me, you and me – we can get out of this alive. And really rich, too. What do you say?"  
She raised her gun and aimed it at John's chest.  
"Miss _Quinn_ ," John said in a low voice, a note of threat in the two words.  
"Who's coming for him?" she asked conversationally.  
"Everyone," the man said.  
Anna looked at John and sighed. Then she lowered her gun and shot the man on the floor.

"I hate you," she said. "I hate you so effing much. I'm seriously rethinking the fifteen million, I swear."  
She was pacing up and down, gnawing her knuckles. He wound some kitchen towel around the wound on the back of his hand. She'd taped it the previous even but it had burst open again when he'd punched Winston's guy.  
"I'm sorry, Anna," he said quietly.  
"That's it. It's over, isn't it?" and she indicated her apartment.  
"I'm afraid so," he said.  
She swept the pile of drawings, homework assignments, off the table in rage.  
"I should've shot you in the doorway," she said, wiping tears off her cheeks. "Your arrival could never mean anything good. You've just managed to ruin everything – this entire life I worked fucking hard to make. I went to college, John. I did job interviews, got a job at a real nice school. I organized the nativity play, I baked cookies for our bake sale. Three eight-year-olds want to marry me, John. I dated guys, made friends - I even got an account on Tinder, you know. I had a life, a real life. And you've ruined it."  
" _'I am become Death, destroyer of worlds'_ ," he said. The realization sat in his chest, leaden and dull.  
She wiped her cheeks and nose on her drapes. John looked at her, startled.  
"Doesn't matter now, does it?" she said sullenly. "You've destroyed my world, so I can destroy my drapes."

They left through the attic. The window was a bit small for John, he had to turn himself carefully to get through it with his swollen shoulder. Anna'd wriggled through it with no problem; she stopped to watch him try to manoeuvre his lanky frame through the window, trying not to strain his shoulder. After a couple of seconds, she sighed theatrically and rolled her eyes, then gave him a hand to get through. He thanked her but she ignored him. He was getting the silent treatment and he didn't blame her. It gave him a chance to think, however, as he followed her along the ledge that led them to the neighbouring building. It was a short jump to the next building and a long way down. She hesitated.  
"I'll go first," he said. "Still scared of heights, I take it."  
He jumped easily.  
"Come," he said and held out a hand. She hesitated again, then jumped, refusing to take his hand as she landed.  
"Vertigo is a bit of a handicap in our profession," he remarked.  
She set her jaw and led him across the rooftop to the fire-escape door. She pulled a bunch of keys out of her rucksack and flicked through them till she found the one that fit.

"You knew this day would come," he said as they made their way down the stairwell. "Or else you wouldn't have the key, the rock on the ledge, the escape route. The backpack."  
She turned her face from him.  
"We can't leave it behind, Anna," he said. "I thought we could, but it always catches up on us."  
She shook her head silently. Her rubber-soled shoes made no sound on the concrete steps, she moved quietly, lightly, down the stairs. He wondered if she'd transferred her skills to the classroom, using her stealth to sneak up on the little kids up to no good, armed with a red pen instead of a Glock. The thought made him smile. She caught the grin and glared at him but said, still, not a word.

He went to move in front of her, to open the door to street, but she stuck her arm out to hold him back.  
"I'll do it," she snapped, peered outside and gave him a curt nod to send him ahead of her. Once outside, she led the way again, past trash cans and a dumpster.  
"Where are we going?" John asked.  
"To the Continental," she said.  
"Shouldn't we be running _from_ there instead of _to_ it?"  
Anna stopped square in the alleyway.  
"That's where _I'm_ going John. We're not bound at the hip – you go your way, I'll go mine. I'm going to tell Winston to call off the pack; I have no dog in this fight and I'm not getting killed because you have a contract on your head."  
"But you're also not going to kill me for the contract," he said. He wanted to state it as a fact, but it came out as a question.  
She looked up at the sky, scratched with the trails of jet planes. A clear blue sky, a bright Saturday morning.  
"Quinn?" he prompted.  
"No," she said finally. "I owe you … a favour. You helped me out when you didn't need to, I'm not going to turn on you now."  
"Thank you," he said.  
They walked on in silence.  
"Besides," she added, "you wouldn't have a chance against me."  
He snorted.  
" _Seriously_?" she said. "Are we really going to have this conversation again?"  
John grinned. "When I saw you last night, I barely recognized you but you actually haven't changed at all."  
She didn't smile. "I had changed," she said sadly. "I'd changed a lot. But, fuck it, that's all gone now, isn't it?"  
" _'_ _I am become Death,'_ " John thought again. " _'_ _destroyer of worlds.'_


	4. Chapter 4

"Why, Birdie," Winston said. "So nice of you to call by."  
He was sitting at a little table on the roof terrace of The Continental, a copy of the New York Times folded neatly next to a boiled egg, a basket of croissants and small china coffee pot. Winston was not yet dressed for the day, but instead wearing a black satin robe, embroidered with a pattern of tiny ivy leaves, and a green silk scarf tied like a cravat around his neck. By Winston's standards, he was _déshabillé_ , but Anna was the one who felt sorely under-dressed.

He indicated the empty seat opposite him and she sat down.  
"Coffee?" he said. "I take it you've already eaten but as it's no doubt hours ago, I can offer you a croissant or, perhaps, an English muffin?"  
At one point it was thought that she'd earned the moniker 'Birdie' as Winston's informant, his little bird. However, as Winston was always quick to point out, Anna was given the name for other, less sinister, reasons: the early bird catches the worm, after all. And Anna was an early bird, up at the crack of dawn, gun holstered and ready to go. It was a certain advantage in a profession that flourished under the cover of darkness: when her targets finally retired in the early hours of a long night, she was known to appear beside a bed and wake someone from a deep slumber to quietly and neatly fulfil her contract.  
"I'll have a croissant, please," she said.  
He snapped his fingers and a plate and cup were quickly fetched. Coffee was poured and Anna took a croissant from the proffered basket.  
"I take it you have already spoken to my man, Vincent," Winston said. "Milk?"  
"Yes, please. I mean, yes to the milk and yes, I've spoken to him."  
"Where is he?" Winston asked, looking around as though Vincent might appear.  
"He's dead," Anna said.

Winston dabbed his lips with a napkin.  
"That is unfortunate," he said finally. "May I ask how he met his demise?"  
"He came to warn me that John might be on his way," Anna said. "But John had already found me. So he called him in and decided to take him down himself. When that failed, he tried to persuade me to help him kill John and share the reward."  
Winston made a _moue_ of distaste.  
"Well," he said. "So much to process. How very disappointing."  
"About Vincent?"  
"Yes, of course. One does hope for a certain amount of loyalty, does one not? Clearly fifteen million is enough to make most people show their true colours."  
"I guess," Anna murmured. She broke a piece off the croissant and nibbled it. She would've liked some butter or jam, but Winston was clearly no longer in the mood to share his goodies with her.  
"You, on the other hand, were not only immune to the lure of a large amount of money, but also stupid enough to help a man who has been declared _ex communicado."_

"Aw, shit," she said. And gulped. "Sorry, Winston."  
"So he left out that relevant piece of information, I see. Hmmm."  
Winston drank his coffee reflectively.  
"And why did you feel obliged to help our dear friend, Mr Wick? I thought you'd sworn you had no interest in returning to our fold?"  
"I lost a bet," she murmured.  
Winston raised an enquiring eyebrow. "A _bet_?"  
"Yeah. It used to bother him a shit-ton that I swore all the time so he bet I wouldn't be able to not curse around him. So, I lost."  
Winston looked at her, frankly astonished.  
"But I managed not to, like, for years," she added quickly. "Really, I did."  
"That is not what surprises me, Birdie," he said. "I am merely surprised that he would remember such a bet and that you would honour it."  
" _Without our honour we are nothing_ ," Anna quoted. " _Don't make bets you don't intend to keep_. What else? Oh yes, _ours is a profession based on the assumption that a man keeps his word_."  
Winston brushed some invisible crumbs off his robe. "Touché, Birdie," he said. "Use my own words to wound me."

He stared over her shoulder. Anna steeled herself, drank her coffee slowly.  
"So why are you here, my little bird?"  
"I don't want to get back into this mess," she said. "I want you to call them off – I shouldn't be involved in this. I don't want to be involved with this. Monday morning, I want to go back to work and pretend this never happened."  
"I see," Winston said. He delicately buttered a croissant and cut off a tiny corner, which he ate carefully. "I take it Jonathan is still alive? Yes? And I presume he is already on his way to somewhere very far away and terribly remote?"  
"No," Anna confessed. "At least, not yet."  
"You have … hidden him?"  
"I've put him … somewhere safe."  
"And you don't intend to claim the contract yourself?"  
"No," she said firmly. "I told you, I want nothing to do with this whole mess."

He continued to stare at some point over her shoulder. At last, he spoke up.  
"Well, well," he said. "This puts us in quite a pickle, does it not? Because I presume that it is known that Jonathan was in your company, which makes you a person of interest to a lot of people. I can, of course, make it known that this was simply a slip on your part and that one is to continue to consider you off bounds … but whether this will actually be taken note of – why, that is something I cannot guarantee."

He spread his hands in a gesture of resignation. "Dear me," he said.  
"What would you do in my place, Winston?" asked Anna.  
"I would send our dear friend packing, like a stray dog on the street," Winston said archly. "I would consider temporary residence within our walls until this matter resolves itself. We can have a room ready within the hour, I shall have someone fetch your things."  
"Until this matter resolves itself?"  
Winston sighed. "He's _ex communicado_ , my dear, with a rather large price on his head. I take it he's also injured or he wouldn't have sought your help, and every professional in the country is ready to step in and … eh … finish the job. I think we are looking at a matter of days."  
"This is John Wick we're talking about," Anna said in a low voice.  
Winston sighed again. "Yes," he said. "More's the pity."

Anna stood in the lobby of the Continental, pressing her knuckles against her lips, as she did when she was thinking. Charon, the concierge, watched her silently.  
"Madame," he said after a couple of minutes. "May I be of assistance?"  
She turned to him, still deep in thought.  
"I don't know," she said.  
"Would you like a room?" he said. "A reservation has been unexpectedly cancelled so we have some pleasant accommodation on the top floor, just as you like it."  
She was silent.  
"Miss Quinn," Charon said in his mellifluous voice, "may I offer you some advice?"  
She nodded.  
"The bonds of friendship maybe strong, but do remember that this situation was greatly exacerbated by some bad decisions on Mr Wick's part. Please do not feel obliged to stand by him, as it will most certainly end badly for you."  
She stared at him, lightly banging her knuckles against her mouth.  
"He's not my friend," she said. "He did me a favour once and I owe him, that's all."  
She smiled wryly at him.  
"Goodbye, Mr Charon, and thank you for your sound advice."  
"But you're not taking it?" he called after her, as she pushed the door open, letting the weak sunshine spill into the lobby.  
"No," she said over her shoulder. "Unfortunately, I'm not."  
"Most unfortunate, indeed," he murmured as he watched her run down the steps and sprint across the road, into a small knot of passers-by. He saw her blond head bob, then she disappeared.


	5. Chapter 5

Seeing that she was determined to go to Winston, John had stopped at a street corner to take his leave of her. He wasn't exactly sure where he was; Anna had led him down a labyrinth of alleyways, doubling back once or twice to make sure they weren't being followed.  
"You need sanctuary," she said. "Your shoulder won't heal properly if you continue to use it and you're limping. That makes you kind of a sitting duck, John."  
"I can't go to The Continental," he said, "for personal reasons."  
She didn't ask what those reasons were. It was one of the things John liked about her.  
"And you're right," he continued, "your best bet is to throw yourself on Winston's mercy and get him to declare you untouchable, so I'm just going to make my own way from here."  
She looked him up and down, thinking.  
"What if I found you a place to rest, just for a couple of hours?" she asked. "While I go and talk to Winston?"  
He shrugged, catching himself when a jolt of pain shot through his shoulder.  
"Where can you take me that's safe?" he asked.  
"This way," she said.

Anna pushed the door of the little shop and the bell jangled violently. The sign over the door said _Mari's_ , but what kind of store it was exactly was hard to tell. There was a narrow display window either side of the door, both of which were jammed with a pyramid of Asian food products, Chinese cats enthusiastically waving their little plastic paws and dozens of handwritten notes in Chinese and English, their writers advertising second-hand tables for sale and looking for babysitters. The window of the door was hung with signs that said TAROT READINGS, ESOTERIC BOOKSTORE and, most perplexing of all, AURA CLEANSING.

A small, round woman came bustling forward. Her hair was greying and pulled back in a bun. She wore a long white tunic over black pants that ended mid-calf but her feet were, surprisingly, cased in a pair of red peep-toe shoes with very high heels. She looked to be in her sixties or seventies: her face was very tan and lined, she looked like someone who had spent a lot of time in the sun.  
" _Néih hóu!_ " Anna said and they embraced. The woman pushed her away and held her at arm's length to inspect her properly. They spoke in rapid Chinese, Anna turning to John and indicating him with a wave.  
"Hello," he said and gave a little bow.  
"This is John," Anna said. "John, this is Mari, my friend."  
"Her psychic," Mari said with a sly smile, watching him carefully to see how he'd react.  
He tried to keep his face still but he knew he'd failed to completely mask his disbelief. Anna at a psychic? Having her cards read, her aura – he tried not to smirk – cleansed.  
"John needs a reading," Anna said. "Or a cleansing. Whichever you think would do him most good."  
"I don't – " John began, but the Chinese woman leaned forward and stood on her toes. She smelled his neck. John froze; Anna grabbed his balled fist and squeezed it in warning.  
"I think we'll cleanse," she said.  
"But I – "  
"I'll be back in an hour. Two at the latest," Anna said. "Mari will take care of you. Relax, John. She doesn't bite."

Mari turned the sign on the shop window to _Closed_ and turned the key in the lock. She walked behind her counter and clicked a computer mouse, typing rapidly on the keyboard.  
"Just getting rid of the CCTV footage," she said. "No one wants to see you here."  
"You know who I am?" he asked, surprised.  
"Of course," she said. "I know Anna's case-file inside out so I'm going to know yours as well, Mr Wick."  
"I'm sorry, but who _are_ you?" he asked. He couldn't remember having seen her before.  
"I worked the switchboard," she said. "Way back when you two were starting out. I handled all of Mason Black's people back then, you know. I used to see your photograph on a daily basis, I tallied up your expenses and issued you your wages, sonny. We've spoken on the phone dozens of times."  
It rang a bell. "That was you?"  
"Retired in 2008, never looked back. Stayed in the area, though – New York born and bred, me."  
"And … Anna?"  
"I knew her as Miss Quinn, of course. She came in a couple of times with Mason, she used to bring me in cookies, sweet girl. Then one day I was standing in the doorway, just over there, when I saw her walking past my door. Down my street! Of course, she looked different, so I didn't believe my eyes at first, but I recognized her voice. She was talking on the phone and I knew that voice immediately."  
She smiled at him. "Seeing as you're officially not here, I think it's best if you don't turn up on my security footage, don't you?"  
John nodded.

That done, Mari walked through a curtained doorway and indicated he should follow her. She led him up a narrow stairs and waited for him when he reached the landing. There were two open doors that led into sunny rooms filled with shelves of books, and the space between each doorway in the hall also held an overflowing bookcase. There she paused.  
"Books," she said unnecessarily, "Esotericism, healing, alternative medicine, Chinese traditional medicines, tarot… all of that sort of thing. More importantly for you, though: fire escape through that window. I live upstairs, no access to the attic but you can get to the neighbouring building through a couple of the windows. Anna's scoped it and it all checks out. Just so you can relax."  
John nodded. She paused in front of a bookshelf and pushed it aside. It moved easily, revealing a door behind. She waved him ahead of her and he went into a dark room. With a flick of a switch, a soft light went on. There were a couple of desks against one wall, one holding a phone and an old-fashioned typewriter, while the other had a very modern Macintosh computer and a printer. There was a filing cabinet against one wall and a massage table in the middle of the room, filling it so that there was barely room to move around it.  
"I freelance," she said in answer to his unspoken question. "Secretarial work of a delicate nature."  
"I understand."  
"Up you get," she said, patting the table.  
"No, I really don't think – "  
"Get up," she said. "Take your jacket off and lay your guns on the desk. Come on now, I haven't got all day. I have other customers, you know."  
"It's really not necessary," he said.  
"It really is," she countered. Her voice softened: "You need to rest, John Wick. When was the last time you slept?"  
"Last night," he said. "For a few hours."

 _For the first time in months,_ he thought. The only time he'd ever properly slept was when he knew Miss Quinn was keeping watch. Then something in his head let go enough to allow him to drift into deep slumber, dark and abandoned. With Helen it had been watchful sleep, wary sleep, waking at the slightest sound, body tense and immediately alert. But he'd slept through fire alarms, breaking windows and even the sounds of a full-on fistfight in the corridor outside their hotel room when Anna had been sitting in the armchair at the foot of the bed, her gun on the table beside her as she read book after book with a small reading light.

"Oh, get on the table," Mari said and her face cracked into a smile. "Anna told me not to take no for an answer. Come on, don't tell me you're afraid of a few little crystals, bogeyman?"  
"Anna said that?" he asked and then added, "I didn't know she spoke Chinese."  
"Cantonese," Mari said. "She's learning. She's very good, you know. She has a rare talent for accents, that one. So – do I have to throw you down on the table myself?"  
John shook his head in resignation and slowly removed his borrowed jacket and holsters. He carefully lay down on the massage table, on his back as she instructed. The older lady covered him with a heavy woolen blanket, then turned on a small hi-fi on a shelf on the wall. Within seconds, the room was filled with the sounds of Buddhist chants.  
"Close your eyes and relax," Mari said, lighting an incense stick. "You're safe here, I promise you."  
She touched his hand and he felt the heat from her fingers warm his skin. John moved his hand away, under the blanket.  
"You can relax," she repeated.  
"I very much doubt that," he said, and reluctantly closed his eyes

When he woke, the room was silent. He sat up abruptly and Anna dashed at him, held him still.  
"Watch out!" she said, pointing at the wobbling table.  
It took him a couple of minutes to remember where he was.  
"What time is it?" he asked. "How long did I sleep?"  
"Hours," she grinned. "About four hours. Mari said you fell asleep within five minutes – you even snored a bit."  
He rubbed his shoulder; it still felt stiff but a bit better. As though she could read his thoughts, Anna held out a glass of water and some painkillers.  
"You look different," he remarked. Her hair was dark brown and she was wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses.  
"Yeah, you like?" she asked.  
"You just look … different," he said again. He finished the water and handed her the empty glass.  
"What did Winston say?"  
"Well," she said, plumping herself down on Mari's office chair, "it seems that you do indeed have a large sum on your head, Mr Wick. And what you forgot to tell me was that the reason why you can't go to The Continental is that you've been ex communicated, so thanks for that, you shithead."  
She twirled back and forth on the chair.  
"Will he put you off bounds?" John asked. "Can you go back home?"  
"His suggestion was that I hide out in The Continental for a few days till you get killed. Then no one will care about me any more and I can go back to my apartment and pretend all of this never happened."  
John nodded his head slowly and put on the guns.  
"Sounds sensible," he said. "Except I don't intend to get killed, so it might be a long stay."  
"That's what I thought," she said.  
He put on his jacket. Anna stood to help him get his injured shoulder in, and then absent-mindedly brushed the jacket down in a gesture that was almost painfully familiar.  
"You don't have to help me, Anna," he asked. "You really don't owe me anything. Putting me up last night settled the score."  
"No," she said, "you and I both know what this is. I owe you, Johnny. Back then you didn't have to …"  
Her voice tailed off. She avoided speaking about it, even in the most oblique terms.  
"I owe you," she finished. "I can't hide in The Continental till you're dead."  
She held out a hand and he took it. "I've got your back, John," she said. "I've always had your back. It'll be like old times."  
She grinned at him, but her eyes were serious.  
"Thank you, Anna," he said. "I'm really sorry about all this."  
She shrugged. "Shit happens," she said.


	6. Chapter 6

They argued in low voices about what to do next. For Anna it was clear: hide. It was what she did best, slipping away into a crowd, a new name, a new accent, new hair colour and clothes. Hiding in plain sight till was to her advantage to resurface again.  
John didn't agree.  
"I'm going to stay and fight," he muttered. "I'll take anyone who comes at me."  
"Great plan," she said sarcastically. "Just tell whoever it is that they're not to touch your left arm in case your shoulder pops again – oh, and you have some kind of a gunshot wound to your abdomen and I don't know why you're limping, but I guess it's not for fun."  
"I'm not running, Anna," he said. "That's non-negotiable."  
"You're not running, John," she snapped, "Because you can barely walk."  
"Well, what do you suggest we do?" he said, raising his voice.  
She shushed him. He was agitated and a spot of blood had appeared on his shirt where some wound had reopened.  
"If you're not prepared to run, then we need to lie low for a couple of days till you heal. Then we need to see who will help you. Help us. We need guns, we need ammunition – we need allies, John."  
"And where can we lie low? Here?"  
Anna shrugged. "Mari will let us stay for a couple of nights – she won't tell anyone."  
"Why? Why should be loyal? Doesn't she want to retire to the Bahamas with fifteen million and change?"  
"Obviously not, you twatweasel, or she would've called you in before now. You were up here snoring your head off all morning, might I remind you?"  
They glared at each other. There was a light knock at the door and Mari opened it a crack.  
"Glad to see you're awake again, John. Would you two like something to eat?"  
Anna suddenly realized she was starving.  
"Yes, please," she said.  
"Leave the guns here," Mari said. John looked at Anna and she nodded, so he shrugged them off. She tugged John's sleeve and pulled him behind her. "Come on," she said and he followed.

Mari led them upstairs to the top floor. The floorboards creaked as they went. Anna moved on tiptoes, barely making a sound, but under John's feet the house seemed to groan. Mari led them into her living room, a room filled with more bookcases and two sagging sofas. On each sofa sat an elderly person, both Chinese, and much older than the apartment's owner. The man bounced up as they entered, immediately tapping the tape measure around his neck, as though he were itching to line it up against someone's frame. His hair was still dark and he had a broad smile that pushed his thick glasses up on his lined cheeks. The woman stood slowly, her back hunched. She didn't smile, in fact, she barely made eye contact, preferring to look at the worn rug between the sofas.  
"This is Mr Chen," said Mari. "As you can see, he is – he was – a tailor. He can see to your clothes, if you wish."  
"I can do rush job," he said. He spoke very quickly – he was the kind of man who probably did everything in a rush, "Of course, you must pay premium price. Not easy to do this kind of thing on weekend.  
"Of course," John said slowly.  
"Or you could just wear off-the-rack like the rest of us," Anna muttered but he ignored her.  
"And this is Auntie Gee," Mari said. "She used to be a nurse so she can take a look at your wounds, if you'd like."  
Anna could tell by John's face that he wouldn't like, but the older woman was already standing beside him, fingering his shirt.  
"Tell him to take off shirt," Auntie said. "He's bleeding, that's good material and it'll stain."  
Anna relayed the message.  
"He your husband?" Auntie asked. "Your – " she said the word in English "- _boyfriend_?"  
"Ugh, no," Anna replied. "He's my … um … brother."  
John handed her his shirt. She took a glimpse of his wound and looked away. It made her feel slightly sick. Auntie Gee pushed him gently to turn him around so she could inspect his cuts and bruises. She tut-tutted at his tattoo and then turned Anna.  
"Your brother?" she said skeptically.  
"Half-brother," Anna said in English, then in Cantonese: "Same mother, different father."  
Mari had spent a lot of time explaining the extensive list of terms for family relations in Cantonese, but they hadn't got around to half-siblings.  
Auntie Gee looked up at her. "Mama had very different taste in men," she sniffed. "Is he Chinese?"  
"I don't think so," Anna confessed then, seeing John's inquiring face, she said, "She wants to know whether you're Chinese."  
"My grandfather was Chinese," he said and Auntie Gee nodded knowingly.  
Anna looked at him in surprise. She knew more about him that almost anyone else, and at the same time very, very little. He raised an eyebrow and she busied herself, helping Mari set the little table jammed behind the couch and up against the wall.  
Mr Chen took it as his cue, and leapt forward, measuring John's back, his arms, his waist, asking him questions about cut and material.

Auntie Gee rooted around in a large purse on the sofa and extracted a little jar. She opened the lid and sniffed it, poking a finger in its contents before applying it liberally to John's back.  
"Is this some kind of ancient Chinese balm?" he asked, wincing as she poked him, pinching the skin and rubbing it vigorously.  
Auntie Gee said something too quick for Anna to understand.  
"It's Neosporin," said Mari. "She bought a huge tube of it at Walgreen so she always carries a little bit around in an empty pesto jar, just in case."  
Anna turned her head to hide her grin.

With Mari and Anna interpreting, Auntie Gee felt his shoulder and confirmed it was sitting properly in the socket again and made a sling from one of Mari's scarves to hold it in place. She bandaged his ankle tightly, then gently slapped the side of his head and told him to rest. Anna thanked her and gave her a roll of cash from her pocket. Auntie Gee didn't even acknowledge it, just threw it into the purse with the jar of ointment. Mari asked her to stay for something to eat, but she turned it down. She was on her way to the movie theatre, she said, she had no time for socializing. Mr Chen, too, left them, taking the stairs with the sprightly step of a much younger man.  
"I'll be in touch," he called over his shoulder. "Best work, rush job!"  
"Sit down," Mari said and pulled out a chair for John. She went into the kitchen and brought back one earthenware bowl after the other, filled with rice, vegetables and some kind of meat in a dark sauce. Anna realized she was ravenous; she filled her plate and then John's, admonishing him for already trying to use the arm in the sling. He ate in silence while Mari and Anna chatted, careful to stay on subjects like the closure of the local dry cleaners and the best place to get sushi in the neighbourhood, but when he'd finished, he removed the sling, despite Anna and Mari's cries.  
"No offence," he said to Mari, "but Anna and I need to talk."  
"None taken," she said, standing to clear the dishes.  
"We'll do that," Anna said. Mari looked at her and Anna nodded. "It's okay," she said. "You don't need to stay."  
She nodded silently and went downstairs.

"If you think it's safe here, we can stay the night," he said. "But we need to keep moving. I don't like the fact that this Mr Chen and her Auntie know that we're here."  
"Aside from the fact that they don't even know your name, who are they going to tell?"  
He shrugged. "Who knows?"  
"Please, John," she said softly, "We can only do this if you're able to fight and at the moment you're not. Please just rest up for a night or two."  
He wasn't used to her asking for anything, much less pleading for it. "Very well," he said finally, but he didn't look too pleased.

Anna showed him what she'd bought when he'd been sleeping, pulling three or four large shopping bags out from behind one of the sofas. Jeans, long-sleeved tops, underwear – all in his size. Anna had tossed his neatly-folded clothes off hotel beds often enough to know what size he wore. He pulled out shaving cream, razors and a pair of sharp new scissors.  
"I thought I could – " she indicated his hair.  
"No," he said shortly.  
"It might help if you changed your appearance just a bit, John."  
"I told you that I'm not running," he said obstinately. "I'm not hiding, I'm not disguising myself. I'm not cutting my hair or shaving my beard."  
"Oh- _kay_ ," she snapped. "Whatever."  
Aware that his tone had been too sharp, he added, "I thought you'd prefer me this way, anyway. I thought you hated – what did you call it? – my milksop face. My big cow eyes."  
"That doesn't sound like me," she said. And smirked.  
John raised an eyebrow.  
"Okay, okay!" she cried. "You had such a baby face, John. I wasn't even sure you could manage to grow a beard."  
He pointed at his face. "This enough for you?"  
"Fine, fine," she said, "You're a vision of hirsute loveliness. Keep your scraggy beard and your scruffy hair. You look a damned sight more threatening than you did when we worked together."

They spent what was left of the afternoon reading. John wouldn't let her turn on the television in case the customers perusing the books on the lower floor would know there was someone upstairs, so they took books off Mari's shelves and made themselves comfortable on her sofas. Anna found a paperback romance but John took down a book on China under Chairman Mao. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him pretend to read it: his eyes were fixed on a page that he didn't turn. He was thinking, probably systematically going through every aspect of the situation they found themselves in. It was something Anna had always found irritating: she'd always preferred to act on impulse, on instinct, but had to wait for John to think through everything in his steady, methodical way. He frowned and shifted his weight, trying to get comfortable on the lumpy couch, his hair falling forward into his eyes. He brushed it back absent-mindedly, scratching his beard. With his hair off his face, he looked younger – like the man she used to know years ago.  
"Stop staring at me," he said.  
She buried her head in her book.

Mari closed her shop at seven and they ate a small meal together. She made up her bed for them and wouldn't hear of their sleeping on the sofas.  
"My guests don't sleep on the sofas!" she said.  
"Your unwanted, uninvited guests should," Anna countered, but she wouldn't have it. Instead, Mari turned on the television and they watched a couple of episodes of _Downton Abbey_ , which she was systematically working her way through on Netflix. Anna pretended to read her book so she wouldn't laugh at John, who was courteously pretending to be interested in Mari's explanations about who was in love with whom and how they were all related.  
"So this is just about these aristocrats and their servants," he said. "And what else happens?"  
Mari looked appalled. "Lots," she said. "Love! Death! The first World War!"  
"I see," he murmured, but he didn't. Anna caught his eye and he gave a tiny shrug of desperation. He looked wan and tired, and no doubt the trials of Lady Sybil and her forbidden love with the chauffeur were not helping.  
"Come on," Anna said, extending a hand to pull him up off the sofa. "We need to get to bed. I'll take the first watch."  
"No, I'll do it," he said. "You'll be up at some ungodly hour of the morning anyway. Let me go first."  
"Neither of you need to keep watch," Mari said firmly. "I have work to do tonight, I'll be at my desk watching the CCTV feed all night."  
John looked at her. "Thank you," he said quietly, but as soon as they closed the bedroom door behind them, he took a seat at Mari's bedside table and laid his gun next to her creams and make-up brushes. Anna stripped off, while John examined his fingers, his fingernails, the wall in front of him, then she pulled on some yoga pants and a t-shirt.  
"Sleep tight," he said when he heard the bed creak.  
There was no answer.  
\- - - - - -

A wail. A wail like an animal. Then a silenced shot, a dull thump.

Anna sat up in bed.  
"John," she hissed. There was no answer.  
She slid out of the bed on to the floor, grabbing her gun. Slowly, she crawled to the door and pushed it open a crack. The living room was empty, illuminated by the street lights outside and the neon light from the shop next door.  
"Miss Quinn!" a voice called from downstairs. "Mr Wick!"  
"Anna, no -!" and a gurgle.  
Anna stood stock-still, trying to place the voice. It didn't take long. She scampered to the door and edged her way down the stairs, staying close to wall so the treads wouldn't creak.  
"Hello, darling, it's me!" the woman called. "And I have a friend of yours downstairs."  
Anna slid down the stairs, silently, her gun at the ready. In the darkness she tried to see John, listen for the sound of his breathing, but he had disappeared. She peered through the crack in door jamb and saw Miss Knight standing in the darkness of Mari's shop, her arm around the older woman's shoulders and a gun pressed to her temple.  
" _Coo-ee!_ " Miss Knight called. Anna was good with English accents, but Miss Knight came from Yorkshire and had a particular sing-song that made her especially easy to identify. "I'm givin' you two minutes, love, then I'm going to make this nice Chinese lady suffer for your tardiness."  
"I'm here," she said and stepped out of the darkness, her gun trained on the woman in front of her.  
"Aw, Annie pet, don't look at me like that. You've got a face on you like a smacked arse."  
"What are you doing here, Jenny?" she asked. "I thought you'd retired."  
"I thought so, too," Miss Knight replied. She was easily in her fifties, but tall and trim. She wore her hair the same way, carefully curled around her heavily made-up face. Anna couldn't see her clearly enough in the dim light but she had no doubt that her counterpart was wearing tight pants tucked into knee-high boots, her top opened low enough to challenge what was considered decent for a woman of her age. "I was retired after a fashion. Any road, I heard that John Wick was now worth fifteen mill, so I thought to myself, 'I could pick that cherry'. I always liked a challenge and this was worth coming out of retirement for. Speaking of, where is the bugger?"  
"I don't know," Anna said. Jenny Knight shoved the barrel of the gun against Mari's head, causing her to whimper in pain.  
"You don't know?" Miss Knight mocked. "Well, I doubt that. Put the gun down, Annie, or this one gets it."  
"Leave her out of it," Anna said and moved forward, almost stumbling over something on the floor. It was a body – Auntie Gee. Mari saw her look down and started to cry silently.  
"Gun down," Miss Knight said. "Because I will do it, you know that. And get your boyfriend down here, _stat_."  
"I told you, I don't know where he is," Anna said.  
Miss Knight thumped the gun against Mari's skull, who started to sob.  
Anna lay the gun on the countertop. In a flash, Miss Knight shoved Mari aside, neatly shooting her below the waist, a whizzing _ping_ that caused the older woman to gasp, then cry in short, jagged breaths. Anna jumped forward but Miss Knight got to her first, smacking Anna's wrist with the butt of her gun before the younger woman could reach for her weapon.  
"Don't touch, my lovely," she said: "Now, let's try it again, shall we? Call your boyfriend and call 'im pronto."

She wrapped an arm around Anna's neck, pressed the gun against her cheekbone. _Tap-tap-tap._ The cold steel banged her cheek and made her teeth rattle.  
"He's probably gone," Anna hissed. "Because if he weren't, you'd be dead already."  
"Effin' wonderful," Miss Knight said crossly. "If that old witch hadn't made so much noise, I could've killed you both in your bed. And I won't get nowt for you because no one's bothered put a price on your head, more's the pity."  
"So sorry for your troubles," Anna said.  
"No, sorry for yours, love," Miss Knight said. "'Cause I'm going to have to kill you, aren't I? Tell me one thing, though, did you ever shag him?"  
"John?"  
"Yeah, me an' the lads back at the Agency 'ad a little bet goin' on. I said you hadn't. I seen the way he followed you around like a sick lamb, but you weren't the slightest bit interested, were you? Poor fucker, almost feel sorry for him."  
"No, we never slept together," she said through gritted teeth.  
"I knew it!" Miss Knight crowed. "Now forgive me but you're goin' to have to say that again so I can get it on me phone. I have a thousand dollars ridin' on this."  
She reached for her phone. Anna saw her opportunity and tried to pull away enough to elbow her, kick her.  
"Stay still, you bi-" began Miss Knight, then her blood splattered over Anna's face, hair, and Miss Knight sank to the floor.

John stood in the darkened doorway.  
"She never shut up," he said.

Anna sank to her knees beside Mari. The Asian woman lay in a pool of sticky blood.  
"Probably near the femoral artery," John murmured, standing at her shoulder.  
"I'm sorry," Mari whispered. "Auntie Gee."  
"How did she know? Who did she tell?" Anna asked.  
"She … got me … my job," Mari said. "Knows people."  
Anna looked up at John, trying not to cry, biting her lips hard enough to draw blood. He jerked his head. _Let's go._  
"Thank you, Mari," she said and kissed her forehead.  
"Let's go," John said aloud.  
"Wipe the security footage," Anna said. "I'll stay with her. It won't be long."  
She sat on the floor and held the other woman's fingers till it was over.

Before they left, Anna showered and put on clean clothes. John paced the living room, alert to the smallest sound. When she came out of the shower she rang the cleaners.  
"Anna Quinn," she said as John tried to grab the phone out of her hand. She swatted him away and gave the address. "I need dinner for three, as soon as possible. I'll leave the door off the latch and the money in the kitchen."  
She threw three gold coins on the table and gathered up her rucksack.  
"There's no price on _my_ head," she said. "Charlie doesn't care as long as he gets paid."  
John shook his head reproachfully, but she ignored him.  
They silently climbed down the fire escape, walking quickly from Mari's shop, moving through the shadows.  
"I always hated that cow," Anna said suddenly. "She really never shut up, did she?"  
"Yes, well, you won't have to listen to her any more."  
"Yeah," she said, morosely. "One down. How many more to go?"  
"Many," John said grimly. "Very many."  
Anna sighed.


	7. Chapter 7

When she opened her eyes, he was watching her, his brown eyes only inches from her face.  
He raised a finger and touched her skin, his fingertip brushing the length of her cheekbone. Anna laid a hand on his chest and felt his chest move up and down, then stroked down the dip between his ribcage and over the scar on his stomach. He drew in a breath, his body didn't move for a second or two till her hand moved upwards and he remembered to breathe again. She touched the small mark on his shoulder, the one she made with a knife in training. She'd moved too quickly; he not quickly enough.  
"You scarred me," he whispered and she nodded. He moved closer and his lips touched hers. She opened her mouth to say something and the tip of his tongue touched hers, feather-light.  
Anna gasped.

"Bad dream?" John said.  
He was sitting on the small armchair at the end of the bed, his legs resting on the covers. They'd drawn the drapes but the early morning light was streaming in around the sides. The room was so small that there was just enough space to walk around the double bed, the chair John was sitting on was jammed into a corner against the window. But it had been cheap, anonymous, and forgettable. Anna had checked them in on her German passport – the one whose photo looked closest to her current appearance – and explained in a German accent that they'd just arrived on a very early flight from Frankfurt. Frau Annika Kaiser and her husband, Thomas. No, luggage, no, no – suitcases lost by the airline, would be delivered later. John had stood by her side as she checked in, watching her fill out the forms in the style of German handwriting that she'd practised over and over. They'd done it dozens of times before: John had no ear for accents, whereas Anna could produce a passable imitation to match every passport she owned. John stood silently by her side, a proprietorial hand on her back or arm, playing the part of the attentive husband. It had never bothered her before now. Now, still half-asleep, she still felt the touch of his fingers on her waist like a burn.

"I dreamt you kissed me," Anna said and could've bit the words back in as soon as they left her lips. She expected him to look away, embarrassed, as he used to do whenever she teased him or tortured him by poking at his reserve, but he didn't. He just grinned at her with his slow grin.  
"A nightmare, then," he said wryly.  
"Yeah," she answered. "A bit creepy, actually."  
She got out of bed and squeezed past him. He drew his long legs up to let her pass but the space was narrow and his feet brushed against her legs. It felt like a hot streak against her skin.

"Holy shit," she said to her reflection in the mirror.  
Her pupils were wide in the harsh light of the tiny bathroom; her newly-dyed hair was darker than her natural colour, making her skin appear even paler than usual. She looked haunted, gaunt, and she could still hear her heart thump-thumping in the stillness. She washed her face and pushed the door open. It sat badly on its hinges, and repeated opening and closing had worn a groove in the linoleum on the bathroom floor. John looked up when she came out.  
"I'll take over," she said curtly. "Sleep for an hour or two."

Reluctantly John got up out of the chair and she sank into the warmth created by his body. She pulled her legs up, resting her chin on her knees and stared at the wall in front of her while he got undressed. She knew it had always disturbed him when she watched him take off his clothes and she used to like to do it on purpose to annoy him, making appreciative noises or wolf-whistling softly to embarrass him.  
"No comments about how you'd like to stick a dollar bill in my pants?" John enquired casually.  
She knew he was trying to lighten her mood, but she felt odd, out of sorts, but she made an effort to smile.  
"Nah," she said. "I'm not interested in seeing you strip any more. You're past your prime."  
She tried to look up at him but couldn't meet his eyes, so he turned away.  
"Must've been a really intense dream," John remarked. He was folding his clothes, his back to her.  
"Yeah," she said. "Weird."  
She scraped her knee with her fingernail, trying to find some courage:  
"John? Remember when we worked together and you … you liked me?"  
He didn't say anything, just folded more slowly.  
"I'm sorry for being such a bitch to you," she blurted. "I guess I just thought you were a bit of a dork back then. You weren't my type but I could've been … kinder. I'm sorry. I was immature and I've often regretted it. I guess the only good thing about being in this mess is that I get the chance to say it to you. I'm sorry, I really am."  
He folded his pants, rolled his socks together more slowly than anyone had ever rolled socks before, Anna felt, then turned to face her. There were two faint spots of colour in his cheeks.  
"It's okay," he said in his husky voice. "It probably wouldn't have worked out anyway. We parted friends, right? And we still are?"  
"Of course, Johnny," she said.

He smiled at her and slipped under the blankets. Anna pulled the curtain aside a fraction and looked out on to the busy street till she heard John's soft breathing and knew he was dead to the world. Then she silently pulled her chair back from the window and positioned it so she could watch him sleep.  
\- - - - -

"Ready?" John asked.  
"Ready," she answered. She wasn't armed – no point, she wouldn't get near the Bowery King with any kind of weapon on her, better to approach him softly and in a non-threatening manner.  
"You've never met him?" John asked.  
Anna shook her head. "Mari spoke of him once or twice. Didn't say much about him, though, but she did go to see him on a number of occasions."  
"About what?" John was curious.  
Anna laughed, embarrassed. "Actually, she went there to read his cards. His tarot," she said, seeing John's frown. She rooted around in her backpack and withdrew a little parcel wrapped in black velvet. When she unwrapped it, she showed him Mari's tarot deck. It was the last thing she'd taken when they left the silent house, removing it from the drawer beside the dead woman's bed, stroking the velvet once, twice, before stuffing it in her bag.

John said nothing, just raised his eyebrows.  
"The Bowery King has his fortune told?" he said. "Yeah, I can really imagine that."  
"I think it's a form of therapy," Anna said. "A good reader can tell you what you need to hear."  
"What you want to hear," John corrected.  
"What you _need_ to hear," Anna insisted. "The tarot is just a mirror. I think you answer your own questions."  
She put the tarot cards into the messenger bag she'd slung around her neck.  
"Is that how it was for you?" John asked, curious.  
Anna laughed again, a short, mirthless laugh. "Unfortunately, yes. But it didn't stop me hoping I'd hear different answers."  
He looked at her, nodding his head as he thought about it.  
"So you're going to read his cards?" he said incredulously.  
"It might get me in the door," she said. "Chances are, he doesn't know who I am. Unlike you, my reputation does not go before me."  
John shrugged. "Have you any idea what kind of answers he wants to hear?"  
"I'll wait till I hear the questions, I guess." She buckled the bag and then said, "You're going to stay here, right?"  
But he didn't reply.  
" _John_ ," she said warningly.  
"I have stuff to do," he said. "I feel much better now, Quinn. I'll meet you back here tonight. If, for any reason, I'm compromised and I don't return, I want you out of here by eight, okay? Choose a passport and a destination and get out of here before someone has the bright idea of putting a price on your head, too."

It was a long speech for John, but she was unmoved.  
"If you leave here now," she said, "You mightn't come back. I don't know if I can get the King to hold back his people. In the time it takes me to get to him, any one of them could get to you first. You know that," she added accusingly.  
He shrugged again. His shrugs could be very eloquent. Anna sighed. When had it ever been any different? When they worked together, they always walked out the door of the hotel room, not knowing if either of them would return. It was best not to think about it. Best to assume they'd see each other later, while knowing exactly what to do if they didn't.

As was their wont, they shook hands at the door.  
"Take care, Miss Quinn," he said, bending his head down so it nearly touched hers.  
Anna felt startled by his nearness, his warm hand in hers. She felt the same heat shoot up her arm, like a mild electric shock.  
"Be safe, Mr Wick," she whispered. He nodded again and slipped out the door. She counted to ten, then opened it behind him.

The corridor was empty; he was gone.  
" _I'm off to see the wizard_ ," Anna sang under her breath and adjusted the strap of her bag. She looked down at her shoes: scruffy Chucks. About as far as a girl could get from ruby slippers, to be sure.


	8. Chapter 8

Winston was peeved. He checked his phone again and saw that Miss Quinn still had not returned his calls. He did not feel particularly inclined to call her again – after all, he wasn't obliged to chase her up, - but he'd always felt a little protective of his little Birdie.

The first time he'd met her, he hadn't particularly liked her. John had been as quiet and watchful back then as he still was, but thinner and clean-shaven. Initially Winston thought he might have had some Native American blood but Michael Black told him that his protégé was part-Asian. That explained his looks, his dark eyes and slanted cheekbones. Miss Quinn, on the other hand, was just about as exotic as the Boston suburb that had spawned her. She was the product of some sprawling, dysfunctional Irish-American family, small, dark, and pale with an obstinate jut to her chin. When Michael Black first turned up at The Continental with the two of them in tow, - two children, really, - Winston had been appalled by her lack of manners and her Boston drawl. The next time they returned, John was wearing a tailored suit, Anna's accent had been smoothed away and her rough edges polished into mannerly sophistication. It was, Winston discovered, her speciality: she adapted to anything and everything quickly. She was could be thrown among any group of people and gradually be absorbed into their midst.

"Why those two?" Winston had asked Michael when they sat down to settle his accounts. Winston'd had his large ledger open in front of him, tapping a pen under the name 'Black' so he could quickly tally up the fees owed and paid for services taken and rendered. "And why together? Why aren't they being mentored?"

Michael Black always supplied the best. If your professional was Black-trained, you were guaranteed job satisfaction. He'd been in the business for the best part of fifty years but he no longer worked himself; it was more lucrative and less dangerous to train others to do the work for him. His system was simple: find them young – the lost boys, the stray girls, - take them in off the streets and train them in the care of an older and more experienced professional. Drill them in the art of offensive and defensive fighting till they either broke and left, or stayed and worked. Winston had never known him to put two young ones together, not to mention two young adults with nothing in common except their shared profession. Winston looked over at the pair: they were sitting opposite each other at a nearby table, within sight but out of earshot. As he watched, Miss Quinn leaned over and speared some of John's carefully cut steak and put it on her plate before he could react. He opened his mouth to protest, flushing dully, then left it. The girl laughed at him, returned the food with good grace.

" _I'm_ mentoring them," Black said in his deep baritone. He rubbed his chin reflectively, watching Winston. They'd been friends for a long time, Black had supplied the right kind of people for delicate jobs; his people were discreet, ruthless and unerringly loyal. "And they are together because they complement each other's faults. He's reserved to the point of imploding, she's always on the point of exploding. Her levity balances out his gravity."  
"Are they any good?"  
Michael kissed his fingertips, like a sommelier would do for a good wine. "That boy – that _man_ is a treasure. I've never met anyone as obsessed with perfection: his technique is faultless. He will work at something until it becomes instinctive to him. I'm telling you, Winston, he is one to watch."  
"And the girl?"  
Michael leaned back against the chair and grinned. "She'll practise, don't get me wrong. She'll work on her technique – if only so that John won't outshine her, but she'll never be as good as he is. However, that girl fights like a bar-room brawler. When the going gets tough, she'll down her weapon and get in there, scratching and biting and kicking. She knifed him, you know."  
Michael's face cracked into a smile at the memory of it.  
"On purpose?"  
"No, no, not at all. They were practising with the blade and John was, as usual, being relentless. _Jab, jab, jab._ I think she just got sick of not being able to get at him, so she just dove at him and stabbed him just under his shoulder. She only intended to nick him but the knife sat quite deeply. The poor guy just sat on the floor with a pathetic expression on his face and blood gushing everywhere."  
Michael laughed his big, deep laugh and his protégés looked up and over at their table to see what was so funny.

Winston waited till they looked away. "And young John is in love with her, I take it?" he asked casually. He'd seen the way he looked at her, carried her bag, held the door open for her. "Won't that make things more … difficult?"  
Michael shook his head. "She finds him about as attractive as pond scum, Win. You almost have to feel sorry for him. But I'm inclined to hope it might make him feel more protective of her. Little one like that? Chances are someone's going to take her out before long, no matter how well I train her."

But Michael Black had been proven wrong. Anna Quinn became known for her ability to appear, finish the task, disappear. And whoever took John on had to contend with his small, dark shadow, barrelling out of the darkness, knife in hand, or delivering the kill-shot from behind her partner's back. They often stayed at The Continental and Winston watched Anna tease, mock and torment John to her heart's content, but she would put herself between him and anyone else without hesitation. Winston had to take his hat off to Michael Black: somehow he had managed to forge a bond between the two that bordered on uncanny. They could've continued together once their contracts with Michael and The Agency were up, but then there was that incident with Tommy Aimes and Miss Quinn hadn't seemed keen on working as part of a team any more, so she'd left John to work on her own.

Winston pursed his mouth. No doubt the whole damned mess stemmed back to Tommy Aimes. Wick and Quinn's absurd sense of loyalty to one another, drilled and fostered by Michael Black, coming back to hit them in the face. He sighed and rang Anna's phone again. This time, she answered. Winston could hear city traffic and passing people: she'd probably turned their phone off wherever they had gone to ground overnight.

"Little bird," he said without ado, "I have been reliably informed that a cleaning crew was sent to a certain store owned by a former Agency worker, where they found Miss Knight, deceased, as well as the afore-mentioned Agency worker, deceased, and an elderly member of one of the Chinese mafia's premier families, who was – brace yourself – also deceased. Am I right in thinking that you know something about this?"  
"Yes," she said. "I'm on record as having called Charlie. That bitch Knight killed both women."  
"And who killed Miss Knight?" Winston asked.  
There was a silence.  
"Birdie," he said sternly, "Mr Charon led me to believe that you declined our offer of refuge in favour of helping John Wick. Have I correctly assessed the situation?"  
"Yes," she said again.  
Winston sighed. "Darling Anna," he said, "If you carry on in this fashion, some enterprising fool will take it upon himself to place a nice little sum on your head, knowing that wherever your tiny feet tread, John Wick's Italian leather shoes shall follow. Do I make myself clear?"  
"Yes," she answered.  
"My offer of a room at the Continental stands until six p.m. this evening," he said.  
"I decline," she said with alacrity.  
Winston sighed.  
"This is about the Aimes brothers, isn't it?" he said wearily. "You know there was little I could do, Anna. He hadn't broken any Continental rules, per se. It was all I could do to refuse them accommodation thereafter."

She said nothing. She never talked about it, not even the night it had happened. John had raged at Winston, but she had sat in silence in the corner, her left eye swollen shut and scratches visible on her neck and arms.  
"Tommy Aimes is dead," she said finally into the phone. "It's long over."  
"But you still owe John, don't you?" Winston probed. "For what followed?"  
"John had an alibi that night," she said, picking her words carefully. "We both did. We were in two different cities, two different countries."  
"Anna," he said, "We both know the truth - no one needs to tell me exactly what happened. I know why you're doing this for him but I have to tell you that you don't have to. You don't have to return any favours, little bird. John Wick will be the death of you, you know that."

She didn't answer. He heard a _whoosh_ that sounded like an incoming subway, then she hung up on him. He sighed and rang through to the reception desk. Miss Quinn as well as Mr Wick were no longer welcome at The Continental.


	9. Chapter 9

The police officers stopped at the side of the house. Sitting on the basement steps, Anna Finnerty heard them talking through the tiny window hidden behind years of weeds and overgrown bushes.  
"Poor fuck," said one of them. "You'd almost feel sorry for him, eh?"  
She smelled cigarette smoke. It wasn't the same as her Mom's, but more acrid, much stronger.  
"Je- _sus_ ," the other one whistled. "I'd overdose drugs if I grew up in a house like that. Holy fuck. How many kids? Five? Well, only four now, I guess. How old's the youngest one, the little girl?"  
"About ten, I think," the first officer said. "But give her a couple of years and we'll be dragging her back to Mom and Dad, probably pregnant and most likely on heroin. I just hope her brother got rid of his shit before he shot himself up to hell."  
"Yeah, well, if he didn't, his parents will know what to do with it."  
"Dumb fucks," the other police officer said. "People like this are the scum of the earth, y'know? Worthless pieces of shit, the whole lot of them."  
The police officers were silent.  
"Come on," one of them said. "Put that out, man. You shouldn't be smoking on the job."  
"I needed it after that - this place is a dump. How come CPS hasn't taken those kids away yet?"

Anna's keen ears heard the scrape of a shoe on gravel as the smoker put his cigarette out. Their voices faded as they walked away to their parked car. She thought about going upstairs but Mom was wailing and crying and smashing stuff, Auntie Beth was trying to pull her into the bedroom so she could dress her up enough to take her down to the morgue to identify Quinn's body. She hadn't seen her brother in nearly six months. The last time he'd been home, he'd brought her a Barbie doll and robbed the seven dollars sixty she'd saved in nickels and dimes. But she hadn't minded. She loved her big brother more than anyone in the world and he loved her as much as he could love anyone.

So she sat on the damp steps till it got dark and then went upstairs in the empty house. She hadn't been missed. But then again, she rarely was.

... ... ...

The elevator descended. The man at Anna's side stood too close to her. Her instinct was to move away from him, but she was familiar with intimidation, particularly with the subtle forms of intimidation that men like to demonstrate towards smaller and, in their opinion, weaker women, so she did not move. In fact, when the elevator stopped, she whipped around and bared her teeth at him in a snarl. Startled, he stepped back and she strode out of the elevator, aware that she'd won that round.

"Well, forgive me for saying so, but I was expecting someone a damn sight more… Asian," the King said. He was reading the newspaper and writing neat notes on a pad beside him. His chair was ornately carved, like a throne, but Anna guessed it had probably been stolen or salvaged from some church or cathedral. There were a few other heavy pieces of furniture scattered around of a similar provenance and a life-sized statue of some Catholic saint was doubling as a coat rack, the King's jacket tossed irreverently over his head.  
"Yeah, sorry about that," Anna said. "I'm obviously not Mari."  
She looked over his shoulder to the wall behind him. There was a map of the city, divided into sections, each marked with a photo of whichever professional was resident on that turf. Some of the photos had a cross through them, a random pattern of – Anna presumed – John's handiwork in the previous few days. John's photo featured alongside the map, slightly larger than the others. She spotted Jenny Knight's photo and noted with interest that her picture bore no cross. Yet.

"You told my man Evan here that you were here to read my cards," the King said. "And I sure as fuck could do with a bit of insight into the future. You know anything about greyhounds?"  
"Again, sorry, but no."  
"Who the hell are you then?" the King said.  
"I'm Anna Quinn," she said. "I'm here to – "  
"Quinn. _Quinn_ ," the Bowery King said, running the word over his lips. He tapped his notepad with his pen. "Why does that sound familiar?"  
"I don't know," Anna replied. "But I'm here to – "  
He raised a hand to stop her speaking. He stood up and looked at her reflectively.  
"Don't tell me," he said, raising a hand. "Let me see what the cards tell us. I'm a bit of a card reader myself, did anyone tell you that, Miss Quinn?"  
She decided to let him play. "No," she said. "But I would be interested in having a reading."  
"Sit, sit," the King said and his face broke into a grin. He looked like a jovial man, he had the gappy, easy smile of someone who enjoyed laughing.

She sat behind his desk and watched him withdraw a long, narrow drawer from a filing cabinet. In it were index cards, neatly divided into sections.  
"Low-tech," the King said, "But so help me God, I tried an Excel file, I really did."  
He flicked through the cards and withdrew one, waving it under her nose.  
" _Quinn, Anna_ ," he read. " _Boston native_ , it says here _. Trained by Michael Black, vouched for by Michael Black, Agency experience_. All good so far?"  
Anna nodded.  
"Here's where it gets interesting: _N.K._ \- " he read.  
Anna interrupted: "What's N.K.?"  
" _Notable kills_ ," the King said. " _Notable kills include Zhou Wei of the Philadelphia Zhou Clan, Tipper Clark at Manhattan Fidelity and James Tiernan of the Tiernan Group._ " He whistled admiringly. "James Tiernan? Now that was a good piece of work." He read through the other names silently, raising an eyebrow at one or two.  
"… And Tommy Aimes?" he said aloud.  
"I did not kill Tommy Aimes," she said. The King looked at her but she stared him down. He silently picked up his pen and crossed the name out on the card.  
"Last noted and notable kill was a fellow professional by the name of Mark Pfeiffer," the King said. "And thereafter an addendum that Anna Quinn has retired and is off limits to all and anyone in a professional capacity. That sound 'bout right to you?"  
"Sounds good," she said, her throat suddenly dry.

"Know what?" the King said, "I remember Mark Pfeiffer. And I seem to remember something, some story, about his untimely demise. Let me see – maybe you can help me out."  
Anna raised her chin and looked at him defiantly, silently.  
"See, as I remember it, he was shot and killed by his girlfriend. At first we all thought it was just a domestic squabble, but it transpired that he'd been hired by the Aimes family to settle a grudge. Am I getting warm here, Miss Quinn?"  
She said nothing.  
"Must've been shitty," the King continued conversationally, "to find out that your lover could be bought for a couple of hundred thousand."  
"He deserved to die," Anna muttered. "I'm worth a whole lot more."  
The King laughed out loud. "Mercy me!" he crowed. "That's what I like to hear: a woman with an idea of her own self-worth."  
She didn't crack a grin, just stared at him till his laughter died away and he replaced it with a frown.

"So I think I know what brings you here," he said, suddenly serious. He tossed the card on the table and Anna read the words written on it as he pronounced them: "John Wick."  
She looked up.  
"See, it says on that card that you and John were trained together. Used to work together. Before my time, of course, but I'm guessing you two are still pals. So did he send you here?"  
"Yes," she said.  
"And what does Mr Wick want?"  
"He wants an alliance. He wants you to call off your people," she said.  
The King erupted in laughter.  
"Now why on earth would I do that?" he said. "The man's got a price on his head – fifteen million at the last count, I believe. I'm not going to ally myself with him, I'm going to _kill_ him."  
He said it as though he were explaining a difficult math problem to a dull child.  
"He's not easy to kill," she said. "And do you really want him to come after you, too?"  
"Let him come!" the King cried jubilantly. "Let him come! It'll save me going after him."

Anna stood up.  
"I'll relay that message to him," she said. "But I would urge you to rethink it."  
"Can you tell me what on earth John Wick could possibly offer me that I want or need in return?" the King said, standing up. He walked around to the other side of the desk to face Anna. "He already owes me a favour."  
"He said he will contract to you for a year," she said. "If things get shaken up at the High Table, opportunities might present themselves to an enterprising guy like yourself. John could help you …"  
She paused delicately.  
"… realize those opportunities."  
The King looked at her, a grin spreading across his face.  
"Uh-huh," he said. "A good offer. But I think I might need a little more to sweeten the deal."  
Anna looked at him enquiringly.  
"James Tiernan died in his bed, beside his lover, in his locked and guarded penthouse apartment in Manhattan. She didn't even realize he was dead till after midday – she'd gotten up, had breakfast and a manicure before she realized that Tiernan was actually dead as a doornail in their ten-thousand-dollar bed. Imagine that!"  
He exhaled through his teeth, a noise of appreciation. "That's good work right there, see. Neat, efficient, minimum of fuss. In and out like a ghost. And I admire that."  
"You want me as well?"  
The King shrugged. "Well, if you're offering …"

Anna pretended to consider it but she had known that it would come down to this. John had argued with her about it but she didn't really have a choice. "Might as well be in for a penny as in for a pound," her Mom used to say, especially when she was spending the grocery money on drugs or cigarettes. Why do things by halves? Why put some aside to buy lunch for the kids? All in or nothing.  
"I'm back in the game now, Johnny," she'd told him. "Best thing I can do is align myself with the strongest side."  
"There's no price on your head," he insisted. "Get out. Get out now."  
"No," she'd said. "All in or nothing. My life is forfeit anyway."  
John hadn't fought her on it; he knew she was right.

"Okay," she said to the King, "A year."  
They shook hands on it, then the King walked back around behind his desk and picked up a piece of paper from underneath his newspaper.  
"You know," he said casually, "you'll find that I'm a fair man to work for."  
He walked over to his map, and picked up a thick red pen, then glanced at the page and neatly crossed out Jenny Knight's countenance. He smiled at Anna. "You or John?"  
"John," she said. The King nodded approvingly.  
"I'm a fair man," he continued, "I could've struck a better bargain. For me, that is."  
"How do you figure that?" Anna asked.  
The King waved the piece of paper. "As of this morning there's a price on your head. One million dollars, a warning to anyone who would aid and abet an ex communicado."  
He grinned at her. Anna bent to pick up her bag.  
"You knew who I was all along."  
Some part of her had expected it, but it still came as a surprise.  
"You will soon find that there is very little I don't know," he said. "Now to the terms of our agreement: I'll call off my people and will assure you safe passage in my territory. That's not to say that I will be able to stop anyone else who … impinges on my kingdom."  
"And how will you help us?"  
The King laughed out loud again.  
"Miss Quinn, you don't understand. I haven't agreed to help you, I have merely agreed not to hinder you. These are two entirely different things."  
"Thanks for nothing," she said angrily.  
"I'm a fair man," the King said again. "I think you'll find that this arrangement will allow you and John to straighten out your affairs before you come and join my fold. All that remains for me to do is wish you the very best of luck."

He held his hand out again and she took it, reluctantly.  
"Evan will see you out," he said. "I'll be in touch."  
And with that he raised his newspaper and Anna realized that she had been dismissed.  
"Don't touch me," she hissed at Evan as he raised a hand to steer her out.

"Shithead," she mumbled as she walked into the dull sunshine. It was a little windy, which meant that pulling her hood up didn't look so out of place. She took a look around and darted off, feeling in her pocket for the piece of paper with her shopping list. The encounter hadn't borne the fruit she'd exactly hoped for, but at least it meant she could go to Starbucks and not end up bleeding out into her oversized coffee. She grinned at the thought and set off.  
"One million dollars," a voice hissed at her from the ground. It was a homeless man, his collecting cup empty except for a few coppers.  
"Don't even think about it," she said. "Your King has guaranteed me safe passage."  
"One million dollars for a worthless piece of shit," he hissed and scratched his scraggy beard.  
Anna felt a lump in her throat.  
"Fuck you," she said and kicked his cup, sending the coppers flying.


	10. Chapter 10

_Back soon. Gone to pick up dry cleaning  
_ read the note. The hotel room was empty but she'd deposited some bags there at some point during the day. He peeked inside and saw clothes, a pair of boots. Another bag was heavier – it contained guns. John checked his watch: seven p.m. As usual, he had no idea when she'd left the note or when she'd be back. She'd assured him that the Bowery King had set an immediate ceasefire in place, but God only knew who else had arrived in New York with the intention of snagging the particularly tempting bounty on his – and now her - head.

He sighed in annoyance and looked around the room – and then saw the little box on the bedside table. When he picked it up he smelled honey and lemons. He knew immediately what was inside. Underneath the box was another note, a more succinct one: _Enjoy!  
_ Despite himself, he smiled. He opened the paper flaps and looked inside, picked up the piece of sticky pastry and bit it. She still remembered what he liked and somehow she'd found it. Once again, he felt more inclined to forgive her – as long as she was back before eight.

… … …

It wasn't their first assignment. They'd been working together for over a year at that point, but it was their first big assignment. It was the first assignment for which they were to earn good money – and it went off like a dream. So well, in fact, that Mr Black rang John in the elevator when they were back at the hotel.  
"You are an unknown quantity," Mr Black intoned in his deep voice, "so don't get me wrong: you had the advantage of surprise. But the fact that you could do this in front of the entire Zhou family and get out alive?..." There was a pause. "Well done. Well done to you both."  
Standing on her tiptoes, her face pressed to his shoulder so she could hear what their boss was saying, Anna squeezed his arm, raising her beaming face to his. She was wearing a sleek black sheath dress, her dark hair was tied up to show off the dangling earrings loaned to her by Black. She'd taken them and her impossibly high heels off when they got down to work, but before they slipped out the back of the ballroom after the assassination, she'd sneaked back – against John's wishes – and retrieved them. She looked beautiful, heart-stoppingly beautiful, and John had been aware of every admiring glance and once-over she'd received all evening. On the job, she'd appeared to hang on his every word, brushing down his jacket and straightening his bow-tie, the besotted girlfriend, the adoring wife. For all intents and purposes they'd looked like a perfectly nice young couple, with eyes only for each other, enjoying the gala evening at a Baltimore hotel.

When they got back into the hotel room, John allowed himself a self-congratulatory, " _Yes_!" and swung around to Anna, who threw her arms around his neck and squeezed him in a hug. She kissed him on each cheek, then planted a firm kiss on his mouth. He kissed her back. She paused a second, unsure, then opened her mouth and kissed him. John felt his heart start to thump in anticipation and pulled her closer. It was exactly as he'd imagined it, he could feel her small frame press against him, moving against him in the rhythm of their kiss. His head was filled with a kind of white noise, a fizzing sound that sounded like it was coming from outside but he knew it was coming from within.

She stepped back and he opened his mouth to protest but she shoved him back on to the bed and crawled over him, kissing his jawbone, his neck, opening his shirt and kissing down, down, over his chest, the long scar down his stomach, down below his navel. She opened his pants and wriggled them down, taking him in her mouth. He was instantly hard, as though his body had been poised for this moment for months and months. She moved gently, cautiously, and he felt himself swell and burn beneath her.  
"Baby," he whispered, "Anna, darling – "

She hopped off him as though he were on fire.  
"Anna _darling_?" she repeated, her lip curled in distaste. "John, you do realize that this is just a fuck, just sex, don't you?"  
She was standing at the end of the bed, hands on her hips.  
"I - " he stopped, unsure of what he wanted to say. He held out a hand. "Come back to bed, Anna."  
She rolled her eyes. "No," she said. "This is not going to work. Seriously, John, sometimes sex is just sex. You can bang someone without it meaning that you're engaged, man."  
"I know," he said, slightly desperate now. "I understand, Anna. Come back."

She looked at him, almost regretfully, but shook her head with resolve.  
"Nah," she said. "Here's the thing, Johnny. I do actually like you. Crazy and all though that may seem, I like you. Just not like that. And I'm not going to fuck your body if it ends up fucking your head."  
She straightened the straps of her dress and smoothed her hair, her eyes fixed firmly elsewhere.  
John felt that same odd plunging sensation in his stomach that you get in a rapidly-descending elevator.  
"You're a tease," he said coldly.  
"I'm not. I thought we were on the same page on this but we're not, so it's off the table. Teasing you would be to pretend I wanted what you want to get what I want, but I'm not doing that." She drew a breath. "You'll thank me later," she said curtly and, grabbing her shoes, she walked out without a backward glance.

They'd both sulked for a week. Michael Black couldn't get either of them to say what had happened. John couldn't bring himself to even look at her, Anna remained coolly distant and unusually quiet. When they went in to collect their premium, Mr Black had looked from one to the other.  
"Don't know what the heck has gone on between you," he said, "but it'd better get sorted. And fast. I'm giving you both two weeks time out and when you get back, you'd better have this …" he waved a hand from one to the other, "… this thing all fixed up. You get me?"  
They both nodded and left in silence. Outside the building, John walked off. He half-expected her to scurry behind him, call him back – after all, she was the one who'd created the whole unpleasant situation, right? - but she hadn't. He allowed himself to glance back at the corner, but she was gone.

John received his folder from The Agency and took the booked flight to Toronto. When he checked in, the receptionist told him that his wife had already arrived and was waiting for her upstairs. He kept his face immobile, thanked the woman and took the elevator up to the ninth floor. His stomach felt queasy, he had the same sense of anticipation he had before he was sent on a job, as though his mind were physically preparing his body for the possibility of a beating.

He opened the hotel room door. He could hear the shower, so he dropped his bag on the bed. On the table there was a plate and a small slice of baklava with a note pinned beneath it. Anna had a sweet tooth, she was always snacking on candy, but he wasn't that keen. The only exception was something one of his step-fathers used to make, a Greek guy called Alex, who worked in a deli and was known for his sweet pastry: small squares of flaky pastry filled with nuts and soaked in a lemony syrup. On the rare occasion there was some baklava left at the end of the day, he brought it home for his little stepson, who was far too silent and far too skinny for his gregarious stepfather. John had mentioned it to her once; she'd found some and brought it back to the hotel, still wrapped in the bakery's wax paper that bore a picture of some figure from Greek mythology.

 _Sorry_ the note said. Nothing else. He picked a piece of the pastry off. It was really good – delicious.  
"Fucking hell," she said, bursting out of the shower. "It's so fucking humid here. What the fuck?"  
"You really have to stop cursing," he said mildly. She didn't even look at the table, did not as much as glance at the plate.  
"Yeah, well, it's okay for you – you don't have my hair," she said and continued her rant about the impossible weather. John understood. They were going to pretend it never happened. They were just going to ignore what had happened between them and carry on as before.

He pressed a finger against the last of the crumbs and ate them, then crumpled the box up and threw it in the trash. The note he slipped into his jacket pocket. It wasn't ideal, it wasn't what he wanted, but under the circumstances, it was the best that he would get.

… … …

The hotel room door opened. Anna came in, her arms full of clothes, wrapped in plastic.  
"Twenty to eight," she said triumphantly. "Let me take a quick shower, then we can get down to work."  
She flung the clothes on the bed and grabbed a towel from the pile on the shelf, kicking off her shoes and tossing her shirt. She was like a whirlwind; her arrival always made their small hotel rooms feel so much smaller.

 _Thank you to all readers who've been kind enough to leave a comment. Much appreciated! Rai_


	11. Chapter 11

"What's in all the bags?" John asked.  
Anna didn't like the way he was looking through the things, so she snatched a bag away from his curious hands.  
"Clothes. Shoes. Stuff. Stuff I don't want people from The Agency looking at," she said. She pretended to rummage through one of them. "I know we weren't supposed to have … well, stuff that couldn't be replaced. But it seems I have a lot of stuff that can't be replaced."  
"Like these boots?" John asked, holding them aloft.  
"They were effing expensive, man. And I got 30% off. But, no, for your information I could live without the boots. Other stuff. Cards from my students, for example."  
"Did you go back to your apartment?" he asked, realization dawning. "You're kidding me, I hope."  
"Nope," Anna said shortly. "Went back in the same way we got out. No one's been there yet, but I guess it's just a matter of time before Winston or The Agency disappear me."  
"Before they disappear you?" John repeated.  
"Yeah, you know – oops, Miss Grady had a tragic car crash on the interstate, boo hoo. Well, I beat them to it. I called in sick. I phoned my boss and told her in my best Indian accent that I was Dr Patel and poor Eileen had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken not only her leg, but fractured her wrist while she was visiting friends in Boston this weekend, the moron. And I wrote hapless Miss Grady off sick for a few weeks."  
She grinned. John shook his head disapprovingly.  
"And your school won't check up your medical records?" he asked.  
Anna dismissed it. "Please," she said, "they were excellent fakes."  
"But how – ?" John began.  
She cut him short. "Do you really want to know?"  
He really did, and at the same time really didn't.

"Do you think you'll be back at work after all of this happens?" he asked slowly.  
She sorted the contents of the bags into a small pile and re-bagged them.  
"I don't want them to tell my class that I ended up mangled in a car wreck," she said. Her cheeks flushed pink and she pressed her lips together. "They're just little kids, John."  
Anna ducked her head so she wouldn't have to look at him and explain herself further. There was nothing more to explain. She tore a piece of paper out of a notebook and wrote something on it, then taped it to the bag.  
"I'm going to have this delivered to Bernstein," she said. "I have a safety deposit box there. It'll be waiting for me when I come back."  
He nodded.  
"If I come back," she added softly.

... ... ...

"I'm sorry – say that again?"  
"I want to go back to Europe," he repeated, more firmly this time. "I'm going to finish this."  
"Wait now," Anna said, shaking her head as though to clear her ears. "According to Winston, you killed Santino D'Antonio in The Continental … and now you want to go back into the lion's den and – what? Kill the rest of the High Table, one by one?"  
"Yes."

She choked on her pizza. They were perched at the small table in their hotel room, eating a pizza from the box. John leaned over and slapped her gently between her shoulder blades.  
"What the fuck, John? And don't make that face, this warrants at least one 'fuck' and maybe a 'shit' as well. As in: Holy shit, John. What the fuck?"  
He shrugged.  
"Thanks for elaborating, John. This all makes so much more sense now, John. You're so eloquent, John. And where do you intend to start this campaign of killing?"  
"London or Germany," he said. "Then Rome."  
"Uh-huh," she said, pretending to consider it seriously. "And when you arrive in Rome, don't you think Gianna D'Antonio will be waiting to spike your head on a spear?"  
"She's dead," he said succinctly. "I killed her. Under Santino's orders. That's what started this whole mess. Yeah." He looked at her astonished face. "Yeah, I guess I should've told you but, you know, you never asked."  
" _Because we never ask_ ," she hissed. "That's kind of our thing. It's how we fucking function."  
Despite himself, he laughed. "That's one of the reasons I always liked working with you," he said, but she ignored him.  
"So Santino orders you to kill Gianna, which you do – and fuck you for that, John, by the way, I really liked her – and then he tries to kill you for killing her and you kill him first?"  
" _Mmm_ ," he said, taking a bite of the pizza to avoid further comment.

Anna shook her head, thin-lipped. "I can see how eliminating the High Table might mean an end to a significant number of your current problems, but let me think about this for a minute. Um, yeah: shit idea. Do you have a Plan B?"  
"I'll get seven members to vouch for me, then the contract can be cancelled. Seven markers or their lives."  
"Six markers," Anna corrected. "You need a majority and thanks to your handiwork, there are only eleven members left. And what will you offer in return?"

"A hit," he said.  
"And what if they hit each other?"  
"Fewer markers to collect," he said.  
She pushed the pizza box away, appetite suddenly gone.  
"Then we need to start in Germany," she said coldly. "Dieter Römermann holds a lot of sway with the Russians and has close connections to the Chinese. And he really liked Michael Black. He's your best bet."

John nodded in agreement.  
"I'm going to need some new passports," he said. "Do you know people?"  
"Yeah, I know people but why don't you have your passports?" she asked. "Do you want to go back to your house and get them? We'll find a way, I can pretend to be your cleaner or something."  
"No," he said. "My house is … gone. D'Antonio destroyed it with a grenade launcher. Yes, I know, - " he said, seeing her face. " _What the fuck?_ Yeah, I get it."  
Ann sat down at the end of the bed.  
"I know I'm going to regret asking," she said, "but can you go back to the beginning and explain all of this?"  
John sat down beside her. He drew a deep breath, one that seemed to sink into his stomach, causing the bed to dip as he did so.  
"See, after Helen's funeral I got a puppy. She'd arranged it before she died, so I called her Daisy…"

Anna rang her people. They photographed each other against the white bathroom door and sent their photos to her forger, with their details. John insisted they think of the most innocuous aliases possible, so Anna googled the most popular first and last names in the US.  
"James and Maria," she said drily. "How Biblical. Last name: Miller? Smith?"  
"Black," John replied. She silently typed the names into her phone.  
"It's going to take a couple of days," she said when the phone pinged a response. "That'll give us some time to get our ducks in a row, maybe visit His Royal Highness down in the Bowery again – he might be able to tell us where to find Römermann. Germany is a pretty big place."  
"No," John said. "He won't tell us because we have nothing to offer him in return. We need to think of something – someone – else."  
Anna yawned, rubbing her eyes. It had been a long day. "Let's sleep on it," she suggested and John nodded in reply.  
"I'll take first watch?" he asked.  
"Why don't we both just try to sleep?" she said. "Neither of us will get much sleep anyway – the walls are made of cardboard, we'll be awake every time someone sneezes."

John hesitated but she'd already turned her back to him, tossing her t-shirt on the chair and rooting through her rucksack to find something to sleep in. When she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, he got undressed quickly, then took her place at the sink. He waited in the bathroom till he thought she might be asleep, then slid into the bed beside her. He heard her breathing, smelled the faint smell of her soap and her shampoo. He held himself tensely, trying not to brush against her in the narrow bed. He lay beside her stiffly for a long time till he no longer noticed the sounds of fire trucks and car alarms, and in the black hours of deep night, he finally fell asleep.


	12. Chapter 12

It took five days to get the passports. Five days, two hotels and, after the forger contacted them demanding a million dollars for his work or he'd contact someone who knew someone and let them know that Anna Quinn was looking for a new papers, a nighttime trip to Queens to persuade the man that his life and his wife's life were worth far more than a million bucks.

"You can't blame me!" the poor man said, sitting up in bed with the comforter clutched to his chest. "I heard you had a price on your head. I'd be a fool not to try to make some serious money on it!"  
His wife was sitting upright beside him, frozen in horror, staring at the dark figure of Anna Quinn at the foot of their bed. Anna had her gun aimed at the man but every minute or two she moved it a couple of inches to the right and trained it on his wife's head. She smiled at the woman amicably, straightening the blanket to cover her feet.  
"Mr. Horowitz," she said softly, "We have worked together for many years and you should be well aware of what I'm capable of. If you tell anyone that I was here, that I made contact with you, that you produced anything for me, I will come back for you. Not only you, but your wife, too."  
The woman in the bed gave a little gasp.  
"And if you even think about telling anyone the number of our spanky new passports or our credit cards or the names we're travelling under, I will pay a visit to little Cooper and Stephen and Mackenzie one fine night – "  
Mrs Horowitz started to sob.  
"Are you threatening my grandchildren?" Mr Horowitz said.  
"Am I?" Anna asked pleasantly. "Maybe I am. You know what I'm capable of, after all. Now, while I'm here, I think I'll pick them up – save you having to come into the city to deliver them."  
"This is the last time I'll work for you," Mr Horowitz said, getting up out of bed.  
"Yeah," said Anna, "I'm not sold on your customer service, either."

… … …

"You get them?" John said when she slid into the car. He'd parked a couple of blocks away, in a residential area. The car was stolen – borrowed – from a street near the hotel. They figured no one would notice it was gone on a short trip out of the city at three o'clock in the morning. Anna leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. John drove well, he'd always had a love of cars and drove them like some people played a musical instrument: attuned to the sound of the car's engine, lightly touching the wheel to make it weave in and out through traffic. She didn't think he was particularly relishing this drive in someone's old Ford, but they were both happy to be out of their hotel room and moving.

"I like what you did today," John said into the silence and she opened her eyes again.  
"What did I do?"  
"The internet research, the phone calls," he said. "I'd forgotten how good you are at that kind of thing."  
When they had pooled their resources – money, coins and weapons, - they realized that they weren't in as strong a position as they would've liked to be. In fact, as John pointed out, they would not be able to use their coins, as he was _ex communicado_ and unable to access any of The Continental or The Agency's services, and their weapons were useless if they were planning to travel. Without the proper resources, there was no way they could take their guns with them to Germany, they'd have to re-arm when they got there. As for the cash they still had? Well, it didn't take long to figure out that they didn't have enough to offer a succulent bribe to anyone for information. Not when the price on their own heads was so much more tempting.

So Anna had spent two days on her laptop, trying to track down Römermann. As was expected, he had no internet presence, so they racked their brains trying to remember anything – any tidbit of information – they knew about him. John had met him once in New York. They'd talked about cars. Probably some other stuff as well, but all he could remember was that they'd spoken about cars. Anna knew a lot more. She'd met him a few times in Germany with Pfeiffer: they'd spent a holiday there, a working holiday, travelling from Pfeiffer's native Berlin southwards through Leipzig, stopping to do touristy things in the picturesque cities of Bayreuth, Bamberg and Nuremberg, before Pfeiffer's business dinner with Herr Römermann in Munich.  
"He has two sons," Anna said. "One of them was there, the older one. Max was his name. They spoke about the younger one, he was doing his _Abitur_ at the time, his school-leaving exam. What was his name?"  
She tapped her pen against the keyboard. "Something that started with T … Thomas, maybe."  
She Googled _Thomas Römermann_ and read the entries.  
"That's not it," she said, almost to herself. "And they probably don't use his surname unless they're involved in his work …"  
She tapped a rhythm with her pen.  
"Tim," she said suddenly. "His name was Tim and his mother's name was Gordana. She's not German, though, she's Serbian – she's a real beauty, used to be Miss Belgrade or something like that. And her surname is …"  
She banged her forehead against the keyboard.  
"Are you okay?" John asked, startled.  
"I _know_ this," she said, her forehead bearing the imprint of the space bar. "I remember this stuff. I make it my business to remember this kind of thing because I know that someday I'm going to need it. It's just that I've got an awful lot of this shit stored in my head and it's like I can't find the right file. It drives me crazy."  
"Why do you need to know his mom's maiden name?" John asked.  
"Because young Tim didn't want to go and join his Dad's band of merry men. To Dieter's endless amusement, Tim wanted to study medicine. And I'm pretty certain he didn't do that as Tim Römermann – chances are, he took his mom's name. And if I can find him, I can find his Dad. What was it?"  
"Don't bang your head again," John said quickly.  
She lay her head on her arms on the desk. John waited silently.  
"Christmas!" she said suddenly. "Her surname was Christmas."  
"Gordana Christmas?"  
"No, Božić, it's Serbian for Christmas. Tim Božić, wanted to study medicine at the University of Regensburg. He didn't want to stay in Munich, Dieter thought it was funny that he wanted to study at a little provincial university. I can find him. I'll find him."  
"I think I'll go out for a while," John said.  
"Yeah," she said absently. "Tim Božić. Where are you Timmy, my boy? Let me find you."  
He closed the door on her, her face almost pressed up to the laptop screen, whispering to herself and Tim Božić.

By the time he came back, she'd found him. He was a doctor in Nuremberg. Single. Lived in the city centre. Looked like a nice area on Google Streetview. She also told John that their forger was trying to bribe him but that didn't seem to bother her at all, she was on the high of her sleuthing success.  
"How do you know all of that stuff?" John asked. "The internet stuff?"  
"I made it my business to know," she said. "You've got to move with the times, Johnny."  
"So where are we going?"  
"Nuremberg," Anna said and her face shone bright at the prospect. "Beautiful Nuremberg in Bavaria. Lots of dumplings and sausages and really good beer. Pretzels and gingerbread and delicious cream cakes. You're going to love Nuremberg, John."  
He was a little doubtful about that but he didn't contradict her.

… … …

"So now we book our flights to Nuremberg?" John said, waking her. She'd dozed most of the way back in the warm car, lulled to sleep by the music on the radio. "Pay a visit to Römermann's son and find out where his dad is?"  
"That's the first step," she said.  
John pulled in. The parking space they'd vacated was still free, so he parked neatly, swiftly. They got out of the car; she yawned, he stretched.  
Then he grabbed her and yanked her down behind the car.  
"What?" she whispered.  
"Look up there," he said. "Isn't that our room?"  
She counted one, two, three storeys, second window to the left. They'd left the drapes open a crack, through which she saw only darkness.  
"What did - ?" she began, then saw a short streak of light – a flashlight.  
"They've found us," he whispered. Anna felt her heart pound, the adrenalin shot through her arteries, her veins. She reached into her bag and withdrew her gun.  
"Fire escape?" she asked softly.  
"You go up the stairs, I'll take the fire escape," he said. "Silently. No fuss. We need to get our things and get out of here."  
Anna nodded, hesitated.  
"John," she said as he started. He looked at her. "John, if it's the Aimes brothers, you won't - we won't - "  
"It'll be okay, Quinn," he said in his husky voice. "Trust me."  
Without saying another word, he slipped across the street. She watched him go, his slim frame moving in and out of the shadows. She wanted to call, "Be careful!" but he was already out of sight, hidden by the darkness.

The reception was empty. Anna paused to look behind the desk and saw the body of the night receptionist pushed in out of sight, an ugly smear of blood on the grubby tiles. She moved as fast as she could, taking the stairs two at a time, her rubber-soled shoes were silent, her ears pricked to hear any sounds. She opened the door to the third floor corridor a crack, a fraction of an inch, holding it tight so it wouldn't creak. The corridor was empty, but the door of their room was open. She slid along the corridor and as she approached, a man came out of the door.  
"Hey!" he yelped.  
From inside the room there was the sound of a scuffle, the man looked in the doorway of the room and Anna used the opportunity to shoot. He whirled around, and the shot missed its mark, shooting him in the shoulder.  
"Bitch!" he shouted, "She's here!"  
But there was no reply, just the sound of relentless thudding, things getting thrown over.  
"What the fuck?" Anna heard. She glanced around. A middle-aged man was standing in the door of one of the other rooms, scratching his crotch with one hand and his head with the other.  
The injured assassin took aim, Anna pushed the scratcher into the room and took shelter behind his door-frame.  
"Did he just shoot at me?" the hotel guest yelped. "Did that fucker just _shoot_ at me?"  
"Don't flatter yourself," she said and dipped her head out of the room long enough to aim and fire.  
"Stay here," she hissed at the guest. "Call the police and I will fucking kill you, you hear me?"

She moved down the hall, skirting the wall, peeped around the doorway. Somewhere outside the hotel she heard sirens, behind one of the doors there was the sound of hysterical crying. John was pressed against the wall, his breathing labored, rattling, two hands wrapped around the hilt of a knife held by one of the biggest men Anna had ever seen. The mountain of a man was grinning easily, pressing the knife deeper into his neck.  
" _No_ ," she said. He looked at her and raised his other hand, the hand that held a gun. Quick as a flash, he pulled the trigger.  
But Anna was faster. As the bullet ricocheted behind the wall behind her, she shot a second time, and John pushed him backwards. The man tipped like a felled tree onto the bed.

" _John_ ," she said and pushed his hands away so she could see the wound. It was bleeding, so she grabbed the t-shirt she'd discarded that morning, bunched it up and pressed it against his neck.  
"We need to get out of here," he said and gave her a gentle shove. "Grab as much as you can."  
She bundled her laptop, some clothes, into her blue backpack. Her hands were covered in John's blood, she suddenly noticed that she was shaking as the adrenalin deserted her.  
They heard doors opening at the end of the corridor.  
"Where?" Anna asked frantically.  
"Back down the fire escape," he said and looked out the window. He put a finger to his lips, indicated the door. Anna scrambled over the body of the huge man who was half-lying on the floor and closed, locked the hotel door. There was a shout in the corridor. John peeked out the window again, shot once, twice.  
"Clear," he said curtly. "Come on."  
She hesitated.  
"Come," he said, holding out her hand. "I know you don't like heights, but you have to do this, Quinn. Come on."  
She followed him down the fire escape, stepping over the body of man he'd killed.  
"Who are they?" she said. He was unlocking the car he'd only carefully locked minutes before.  
"Don't know, don't care," he said and without waiting for her to put on her seatbelt or stow her bag, he tore off.

He got on the interstate and drove. Anna told him to head for Philadelphia airport and while he drove swiftly, checking the rearview mirror, she booked their flights to Cologne.  
"Why Cologne?" John asked . "Is it near Nuremberg?"  
"It's a few hours by car, but it's a small airport. If we want to fly to Nuremberg, we have to go through London, Munich or Frankfurt. We're leaving tomorrow afternoon. This afternoon," she corrected, "at 3 p.m."  
She didn't need to tell him that they were less likely to be expected at a smaller airport. She tapped the keys.  
"Is it direct?"  
"No, via Dublin," she said. "I doubt that they'll reckon with a stopover in Dublin."  
John nodded, then winced as his wound started to bleed again. Anna shut the laptop.  
"We'll need to find another hotel in Philly," she said, "Somewhere near the airport. We have to get some bags and straighten up our story in case we get stopped in immigration."  
"Sure," he said softly.  
"You okay, John?" she asked.  
"Yeah, just a bit beat up," he said. "Again."  
He smiled at her wryly and she leaned over, touched a bruise on his cheek. He froze.  
"I hate to see you hurt," she said.  
"Never bothered you before."  
She shrugged. "I'm getting soft in my old age," she said and tried to laugh it off casually. It fell into silence. Neither saiid anything, each looking out of their own window to watch the winter sun rise.


	13. Chapter 13

"The best of German engineering," the salesman murmured. "This one drives like a dream."

They were at the car rental counter in Cologne airport and John was poring over the list of cars for hire. His finger had trailed down to the bottom of the page, stopping at a BMW.  
"Well, we don't really need such an expensive car," John had said reluctantly. He turned to look at Anna, waiting for her response. He was wearing a grey long-sleeved t-shirt and jeans, just a regular guy taking a nice holiday with his wife in Europe. Maybe a stockbroker back home. A businessman working downtown. Not the kind of guy who got to take a big, powerful car out on an open road very often, the salesman thought.  
"There is no speed limit on many parts of the German autobahn," he whispered to this quiet man, as though it were some kind of state secret.  
John looked over at Anna again and the salesman quickly said, "What would say your lovely wife?" with his best attempt at a charming grin.  
"His lovely wife would say he should get whatever the heck he wants," she said. "As long as he hurries up."  
She smiled sweetly at the salesman and said, "Get whatever you want, baby," to John. He grinned and pointed at the car. The salesman all but rubbed his hands as he assembled the paperwork.

They were words she quickly regretted. As they were pulling through Cologne's suburbs, looking for the sign for their motorway, John was restless, checking his mirrors and glancing over his shoulder.  
"Is something wrong?" Anna asked immediately. "Are we being followed?"  
"Maybe," he said. "But I can lose them once we're on the interstate."  
He found the motorway and wove swiftly between the cars as he picked up speed. Anna watched him perk up behind the wheel, sitting upright, his eyes flicking between the rear and side-view mirrors and the road ahead of him. She kept twisting around but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. She opened her mouth to ask him but he just said, "Wait," and overtook the car ahead of him.

As soon as they cleared the urban areas around Cologne, he stepped on the gas and the car sped along the road, whizzing down the fast lane past the other cars.  
"Are we still being followed?" Anna asked. She was pressed back against the seat as though pushed back by centrifugal force. John, on the other hand, was still sitting straight up in his seat, alert and … well, almost _happy_ , it seemed to her. A smile played about his lips as he searched for a music station on the radio.  
"Um," he said and didn't answer.  
Anna grew suspicious. "Wait a minute," she said, "Were we ever being followed? Did you just make that up?"  
John laughed, a sound she hadn't heard in a long time, his deep, husky laugh.  
"I just wanted to drive it really, really fast," he confessed.  
Anna rolled her eyes.  
"There is no speed limit on many parts of the German autobahn," he said in a German accent and laughed again.  
Anna laughed, despite herself. "You're a big, fat liar, John Wick," she said. And made sure her seatbelt was fastened tight.

They pulled in in front of their hotel. Directly across the road was Nuremberg's mediaeval city wall, punctuated at regular intervals by squat round towers. Beyond the wall were the city's red rooftops, little windows jammed side by side between the red roof slates.  
"It wasn't _that_ bad," John admonished when she got out of the car and clutched her chest, pretending to stagger.  
"There should be a ride on Coney Island called _John Wick's Autobahn of Death_ ," she complained. "For people who like extreme thrills."  
He grinned and grabbed her bags.  
"Tim Bozic doesn't live too far from here," she said. "Across the road, somewhere on the other side of the wall – up towards the castle."  
She pointed at the building up at the top of the hill. John judged it to be a couple of miles away.  
"What if…" he said and hesitated.  
She looked at him enquiringly.  
"What if we don't go and find him tonight?" John said quickly. "What if we just have dinner and a beer?"  
Anna looked at him, agog.  
"A beer?" she repeated. " _Alcohol_? When we're _working_?"  
He shrugged. "Sure. Take a night off."  
"Take a night _off_?" she said, horrified. "You've spent the last five days sighing and moping because you couldn't do anything and now you want to just take a night off and drink … _beer_?"  
Her genuine horror made it sound utterly preposterous and that made John laugh again.  
"Who _are_ you?" she demanded. "This is not the John Wick I know. Wearing jeans, laughing, wanting to go out drinking … _beer_."  
She threw her hands in the air in comic disgust. He laughed even more, covering his mouth with his hand. On the rare occasions he laughed, he unconsciously covered his face, as though it were an act so private he instinctively tried to hide it. Anna pulled his hand away.  
"Fine," she said. "Let's go wild. Let's paint the town red. Let's go and have a schnitzel and a beer."  
She walked into the hotel, shaking her head.

The restaurant was small, but they found a table in the corner facing the door, next to the entrance to the kitchen. The place was dimly-lit and the heavy wooden furniture scarred and chipped with age. The beamed ceiling was hung with steins, garlands of dried flowers and fake ivy. The walls were painted with pictures of red-faced German men and stout women drinking beer, red cheeked and cheerful, bedecked in dirndls and lederhosen. The actual clientèle was a good deal less cheerful and far less rustic. Next to them a group of elderly German men were playing a card game, their eyes fixed on their own playing cards and those of their opponents'. The other patrons were equally old, more interested in their own discussion than in the couple that had come in and taken the corner table.

"Very authentic," John remarked.  
"The food is good," Anna said. She ordered John a Wiener schnitzel with fries, she took the pork roast with dumplings. The waitress – a woman long past retirement age who wheezed when she stopped moving – brought them two tankards of beer.  
"Cheers," Anna said.  
"What do they say here?"  
" _Prost_ ," she answered.  
" _Prost_ ," John said and he took a sip of his beer, nodding approvingly. He looked around, smiled and nudged Anna to show her one of the murals, in which a buxom waitress not unlike the one who took their order, was eyeing an unruly customer with misgivings.  
"Was she already around when they painted these things?" he asked and grinned at her.  
Anna couldn't take it any more.  
"Fuck, John," she said. "You're freaking me out. What's with all of the … good humour?"  
He shrugged. "Just glad to be away from New York, moving, doing stuff. And driving."  
He drank deep.  
"Go on," he said, indicating her beer. She sipped it cautiously. His was empty by the time the waitress deposited their plates on the table. Wordlessly the older woman took the glass and minutes later brought him a full one.  
" _Noch eins_?" she said to Anna. Another one?  
" _Noch nicht,_ " she said. Not yet.  
"I thought you were supposed to be Irish," John remarked, indicating her half-full glass.  
"I'm pretty sure that's racist," she said. "I don't know how because this beer is really strong and it's hard to think straight, but I have a feeling that's some kind of harassment."  
John smiled. "Did you come here before to do a job?" he asked.  
"Nah, came here with Pfeiffer," she said shortly. "We were in Berlin and we drove down to meet Dieter in Munich. Stopped here for a night."  
She drank her beer and focused on her plate.

Emboldened by the alcohol, John asked: "What happened with Pfeiffer, exactly? I mean, Markus told me stuff but even he didn't know the full story."  
Anna chewed her roast grimly, not meeting John's eyes.  
"Yeah, well," she said, dabbing her lips with her napkin. "Martin Aimes reached out to him and offered him a quarter of a million to kill me. And Pfeiffer, being the greedy bastard that he was, was happy to take it. Luckily for him, he'd grown tired of me already and apparently it was common knowledge at The Agency that he'd been having an affair with one of the telephonists."  
John raised an eyebrow.  
"Mmm," Anna said. "I know, right? So he had planned to shoot me in my sleep one night, 'cept he had a pang of conscience so he woke me to tell me what he was going to do, because, ya know, it was only fair and whatnot. Professional courtesy, personal favour. So I beat the shit out of him and shot him in the chest."  
She put her knife and fork down, pushed the plate away.  
"How long had you been together?" John asked quietly.  
"Two years," she replied. "Two years and two weeks. He'd just taken me to Atlantic City for our anniversary. I should've known something was up," she said darkly. "Who takes a girl to Jersey for their anniversary?"  
"Had you any inkling, any reason to believe he wanted to kill you?"  
Anna laughed but it was a cold laugh, an ironic _ha-ha-ha_. "John," she said, "I wanted to love that man so bad, I was prepared to ignore every warning sign, every alarm bell."  
He leaned back in the seat, his dark eyes fixed on her. Sometimes they were so dark, they were nearly black, and his stare always made her squirm.  
"Do you really want to know?" she said. "It's a tragic love story for the ages. With a twist to the ending."  
He nodded, a barely perceptible movement.  
Anna sighed and told him.

… … …

When she'd first met Mark Pfeiffer, she thought he was an arrogant shit. An arrogant German shit, to boot, who corrected her grammar and looked her up and down every time they met, as though she were on display for his personal gratification. When she left John and went her own way, she'd worked alongside Pfeiffer on a couple of smaller jobs and somewhere along the line, she'd fallen for him. He was everything John was not: he was gregarious and extroverted; he held a group of people in thrall with his stories and his laughter. He was good-looking in a conventional way: sandy hair, regular features, light tan, but he had light grey eyes that changed colour with his mood, a feature that made him look a little unpredictable and somehow more attractive. By the time Anna realized she thought him handsome, she'd already developed a crush on him and her irritable snapping ceased to stem from annoyance but from an attempt to prevent him finding out that he was spending far more time in her thoughts than she would've liked.

Their affair was intense and passionate from the beginning. Pfeiffer was a risk-taker, a thrill-seeker, and any job they worked on left her gasping for air when the adrenalin kicked in. Unlike John, who constantly assessed everything that was happening around him, Pfeiffer was gung-ho, with a lust for life that Anna found sensual. Sensational.

And then, somewhere along the line it had simply … petered out. In retrospect she realized that for someone like Pfeiffer, the thrill in any relationship lay in the hunt and the chase. Once he'd won her over, once he'd made her change her mind about him against her will, once they'd moved from breathtaking sex and fiery encounters, they'd settled into a routine of sorts and then, thereafter, - in Pfeiffer's mind – into mundanity. After their first year together, Pfeiffer had slowly started to become distant and his jobs took him further afield. Anna should've taken the hint and understood, but instead she clung to what they had had. Because it hadn't been all bad: between periods of Pfeiffer's chilled disinterest, there were nights – days, weekends, weeks even – when he was loving and attentive again. Probably, she learned later, when he was returning from his lover and bitten by pangs of guilt. Every time he returned to her, she hoped it was a return to the way things had been, but it never was. Not for long, anyway.

So when she woke in the middle of the night with the cold barrel of his gun against her breasts, her first instinct was to cry: not at her imminent death, but at the fact that the relationship was finally, inevitably, inexorably over. Then Pfeiffer had started his spiel about how he felt it was only fair that he look her in the eye when he finished the job because he owed it to her. At that very moment, Anna realized that he was re-writing their story in a way that painted him as the good guy. The decent guy. Sure, he had to kill her – for money, but he'd gloss over that bit somehow – but he didn't just shoot her in the head while she was sleeping. No. 'Cause Mark Pfeiffer was an all-round good egg. She'd felt a ball of hot rage grow inside her and she didn't know who she was most angry at: her own stupid self or the shithead kneeling beside her in the bed, his gun pressed against her ribs.

So she slipped her hand under her pillow, withdrew her knife and just as he was explaining how they'd both known it was over for a long time, she jabbed it into his neck, banging the gun out of his hand so it skittered across the bedroom floor. She whacked him hard a few times, kicked him for good measure, then picked up the gun and shot him in the chest. She flung the gun on the floor and called Charlie and his crew to remove the body in her bedroom. She stayed in the kitchen when they came, pressing the gold coin into Charlie's hand without a word.  
"I'm really sorry, miss," he'd said and she'd nodded in reply. The next day she drove to The Continental and handed in her notice. She dumped a handbag full of gold coins on Winston's desk and told him to fix it. To disappear her. To give her a new life. Winston had done his best to persuade her but she was rigid, shaking her head, insisting he get her out. By the time she left The Continental later that day, she was Eileen Grady from Pittsburgh, with clean papers, a clean driver's licence and, best of all, a clean conscience.

… … …  
" _The End_ ," she finished up. "I then had to learn all kinds of crap other people learn in their teens and twenties, like how to use a washer, how to cook, how to assemble Ikea furniture, because while my peers were out drinking with their roommates, I was assassinating Asian gang bosses. So when I was finally a reasonably functioning adult, I went back to school and studied to be an elementary school teacher."  
"Why?"  
"Because I was sick of grown ups doing sick things to each other," she said succinctly. "And what about you, John? Why did you leave?"  
"I met Helen," he said simply. "And she made me believe I was a good person, a worthy person. So put everything on the line and left to be with her. No twist in the tale, I'm afraid."  
He drank the last swig of beer and signalled for two more. Anna took hers without protest.  
"What was she like?" she asked finally.  
"Kind. Loving. The type of person who saw goodness in everyone and everything. Fun – lots of fun. Always laughing. You'd have liked her, you two would've have a lot to laugh about. She had a great sense of humour, like you."  
He took another sip of his beer.  
"But without your darkness. Without _our_ darkness," he corrected.  
He looked down into his glass and his hair fell over his eyes. The men at the next table whooped at a win, one man threw his cards on the table and protested good-naturedly.  
"I like our darkness," Anna said and he looked up. She smiled at him and touched his fingers with her own. "I personally think our darkness is one of our more attractive qualities," she said defiantly.  
John's face broke into a careful smile.  
"I'll drink to that," he said and raised his glass.  
" _Prost_ ," said Anna


	14. Chapter 14

They walked back to the hotel through the city centre, down the cobbled streets, winding their way across the large square where the Christmas market took place and up the Königstrasse that took them over the river. John stopped to look at the view and Anna shivered beside him in the bitter wind. The effect of the beer was slowly wearing off, allowing the cold – and dull sobriety – to slowly seep through her skin. Her companion, on the other hand, stood looking out over the darkened houses, oblivious to the people behind them on their way home after a night out, and apparently unaware of the temperature because his leather jacket was open. Anna, meanwhile, was doing her best to wrap her jacket around her narrow body twice.  
"It's pretty," he said, as though it were a concession. "Very romantic."  
"On this side," Anna muttered. "Just don't look around."  
On the other side of the bridge the river was lined with clunky office blocks in a style that had been very _du jour_ in the 1960s and 1970s.  
"Heeeeey," a young man said, detaching himself from a group. " _Hey, soll ich von euch ein Bild machen?_ "  
John's hand was already at his waist, fingertips searching for the knife he'd hidden, but Anna dug her nails into his arm.  
"He's just drunk," she whispered. "He just wants to know if he should take our photo."  
" _Nein, danke_ ," said John.  
" _So romantisch!_ " the man whooped and staggered off with his friends, who mocked his failed attempt to take a photo of the couple.

"So romantic," Anna said snidely. "You should drop me back in your arms like Rhett Butler and ravish me on this bridge, like in one of those old technicolour movies from the thirties. The violins will sway and the whole thing will fade to black for the credits. I can just see the title: _The Grieving Widower and the Scorned Murderess_ , starring John Wick and Anna Quinn _."_  
John turned to look at her, frowning.  
"Sorry, sorry," she said. "I'm a mean drunk."  
She leaned over the parapet of the bridge and studied the water below. She had to stand on her tiptoes to do so, leaning her entire body across the wide stone ledge. John hesitated, then pulled her in.  
"Darling," he said in his best Rhett Butler voice, "I have a mind to kiss you, right here and right now."  
Anna looked at him, head tilted to one side, then theatrically flung the back of her hand across her forehead.  
"Oh, John," she simpered. "You beast!"  
He pulled her into his arms and pressed a kiss against her mouth.  
"Oh my," she sighed dramatically. "I am powerless against you, you fiend!"  
He grinned, his lips curving against hers. She kissed him back.

And suddenly, it changed. She moved beneath him, one fluid movement, so she was pressed against him, inside his jacket, her hands against his back, nails digging gently into his skin. He tried to kiss her and get closer, snake his hands beneath her jacket to touch her skin, her body warmth. His lips left her mouth and he dipped his head to kiss the soft skin of her neck and –  
she sprang back as though he'd struck her.  
"Oh, my," she said again, but this time the tone was different. They stared at each other for a minute or two, and John felt slightly stunned, not knowing whether it was the beer or the kiss.

"Come on," she said curtly and marched off down the street towards the Lorenzkirche, the large church on the square at the top of the hill. Always a few steps ahead, she went down the stairs to the subway station and he followed wordlessly. They hopped onto a train that was just about to leave the station and two stops later got out again, near their hotel. She walked ahead of him as fast as her legs would move and even though his were much longer, he had difficulty keeping up.

In their hotel room she grabbed her clothes and undressed in the bathroom. He waited to speak to her but she held a hand up.  
"No need," she said. "It's all good. Good night, John."  
She got into bed and rolled herself in the blanket, at the very edge of the bed.  
He wanted to say something but her eyes were screwed tightly shut in an attempt to fake sleep. He took the hint and took his nightclothes and got changed in the bathroom as well.

… … …

" _Ach du Scheiße_ ," said Tim Bozic Römermann. _"_ _Ach du Scheiße."_  
It was the only thing he could say. The last thing he had expected was to find John Wick and Anna Quinn sitting on his designer sofa, their hands folded in their laps, waiting patiently for his return. He'd had a long day at the hospital and all he really wanted to do was watch '13 Reasons Why' on Netflix.  
 _"_ _Was wolltet ihr dann?"_ he asked wearily. _"Hat mein Vater euch geschickt? Ihr könntet ihm sagen, dass ich weiterhin nichts mit ihm zu tun haben will._ _"_  
John looked at her, so Anna translated briefly: "'Holy shit, holy shit. What do you want? Did my dad send you? You can tell him that I still want nothing to do with him.' More or less."  
She was still having difficulty looking him in the eye but apart from that, she was studiously pretending that nothing had happened between them.  
"You're American?" Tim said.

He was tall, like his mother, probably a full head taller than his father but he moved like someone who was constantly surprised by the length of his own limbs: knees slightly bent and arms tucked in at his elbows. He had his father's wispy hair, which was already starting to thin, although he probably wasn't much older than 25 or 26. In all, Anna realized, he had managed to lose the genetic lottery, inheriting aspects of both his parents that, when mixed together, produced a lanky young man with a collection of physical features that seemed to clash: a large nose atop his mother's wide mouth and full lips, with a chin that seemed to melt into his neck under the weight of the rest of his face. His older brother, as she remembered, had got his mother's thick hair, his father's strong chin and the chunky build that balanced out his mother's height. Poor Tim was not as fortunate.

"I have nothing to do with my father," he said coldly. "I hate him and everything he does. We have not spoken since two years now."  
John looked around, his dark eyes resting on the large television, the shiny kitchen appliances.  
"But he's paying for your apartment," he noted. "I don't know much about real estate in Nuremberg but I don't know many medical students who can afford a city centre loft apartment."  
He cocked his head enquiringly, while Tim scratched his cheek, squirming.  
"What do you guys want?" he demanded. "Is it money? Well, if you think you can hold me hostage for money, then you should forget it. My father will not pay. On _principle_."  
He spat the last word out.  
"We just want to know where he is," Anna said.  
"Are you the police?"  
Anna laughed, John chuckled quietly.  
"Um, no," she said. "This is definitely not a good cop, bad cop situation."  
"So are you going to kill him?" Tim asked, almost fearfully.  
"What do you care? I thought you hated him," she said and muttered to John, "Someone has Daddy Issues."  
John nudged her quiet.  
Tim ignored her and turned to John. "Are you going to kill him?" he demanded.  
"No," John said softly, "We just need to speak to him. It's a business matter. But we have no other way of getting in contact with him. If you tell us where to find him, you have my word that I will not kill him."  
He stretched out his hand. Tim looked him up and down, then looked over at Anna. She nodded. He took John's hand and shook it.  
"Or my brother," he added. "Or my mom."  
"Your family are safe," John assured him.

Tim took a Post-it and wrote out his father's address, handing it to John. He packed it in his wallet and as he did so, Tim noticed the gun in his belt.  
"That looks like mine," he said.  
John shrugged. "Hide them better next time," he said. "You okay here?" he asked Anna. She nodded.  
"Hide _them_?" Tim said, his voice rising a note. Anna pulled out his second gun from behind her back.  
"You should never keep them together," she admonished. "And definitely not with your complete supply of ammo. Didn't your father teach you anything?"  
"She's staying here?" Tim said. "She's not staying here."  
He shook his head firmly.  
"She is," John said. "Becuase you're our insurance policy."  
He turned to Anna and awkwardly patted her arm. She smiled at him.  
"Good luck," she said and opened the door of the apartment to let him out. John walked briskly down the corridor. As the door closed behind him, he could hear her say, "So what will we have for dinner?"

… … …

Dieter Römermann lived just over an hour from Nuremberg, not too far from Munich's international airport, in a prosperous commuter town. John didn't know what he'd been expecting, but the Römermann home was quite unlike the D'Antonio palazzo or the penthouse suite overlooking Central Park that the Zhi Wei liked to rent when he came to New York. The Römermann residence was big, that was true, but no bigger than the other houses on the admittedly affluent street. There was a high wall around the property, beyond which he could see the tops of mature trees, but no evidence of a guard or a lookout.

He'd parked the car a street away and approached the house on foot, sticking to the shadows, looking out for CCTV cameras or lights that might be triggered by motion detection. Nothing. It was simply a quiet suburb: lights were on in some houses and he could see people stacking dishwashers in pristine kitchens or watching television behind their expensive plate glass. He was confused, checked the piece of paper again, and his heart sank: Tim Römermann had obviously given them the wrong address. John stood stock still – if he was that duplicitous, what else was his capable of? He pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contacts to find Anna's number.

A powerful light flashed in his face and he raised at arm to shield his eyes.  
"Chohn? Chohn Vick?" said a voice and lowered the flashlight.  
It was Dieter Römermann, wearing a scruffy Adidas tracksuit and sandals. He held a torch in one hand and a handgun in the other.  
"Vat ze fuck, Chohn?" he said. "Get inside before my neighbours call ze police."  
He walked back down the street and held a side gate open so John could pass in front of him, _tsk-tsk_ ing as he closed it behind him.  
"I have cameras everywhere," Römermann boasted. "The best in the business, so discreet. No one sneaks up on me, not even the bogeyman."  
"I guess I was expecting something more…" John paused, not wanting to insult him, "…more elaborate."  
"My wife likes the neighbourhood," he said, leading him into a very large living room that opened out into a white kitchen, uplit in the darkness by blue strip lighting. One wall had floor to ceiling windows that looked out on to the dark garden. The television was on over a huge fireplace and a soccer match was in play. Above it were four smaller screens, showing live feeds from the street outside.  
"And every man knows that a happy wife means a happy life, right? Besides, who would be stupid enough to attack me, John Wick? Who would be that fucking _stupid_?"  
He turned to look at him, an eyebrow raised. He wasn't a tall man but he was stockily built, like a former wrestler. His face bore a number of old scars that he tried to cover in part with a thick beard. He looked like what he was: a thug that had made a lot of money.

"So why are you here?" Römermann asked. He opened the fridge and withdrew a beer, popping the cap open before he went back to the sofa to slouch down in front of the TV. John followed him and Römermann pointed at a seat. John sat down at the edge of a large armchair, with the door in his line of sight, facing the big windows where he saw his pale reflection watching in the glass.  
"You heard about Santino D'Antonio?" John asked.  
"Yes," Römermann said. " _Du bist ein Depp, John._ "  
"I don't speak German," he said.  
"You're a fucking idiot," Römermann said. "Fifteen million on your head. You fool."  
"So you know why I'm here?"  
"I guess you want my marker," he said. He took a swig of the beer and turned the television up to hear the commentary. "Bayern Munich," he said, indicating the screen with his bottle. "Playing like shit this season. So," he said, turning to John, "I give you my marker and you …?"  
"I let you live," John said and slowly placed his gun on his lap. Römermann snorted.  
"Oh, please," he said. He looked over at the window and raised a finger. A red spot appeared on John's jacket, just above his heart. He looked up and saw a second red dot on his forehead in his reflection. John raised a hand placatingly and placed the gun on the sofa table in front of him.

"Do you want the money?" John asked.  
"Oh, _please_ ," Dieter said again with a note of distaste. "I have a Gauguin hanging in my bathroom worth seventeen million. When I take a shit I look at something worth more than you. No, the money is peanuts to me."  
Again, the note of pride. John didn't know much about him except what Anna had told him: Römermann had grown up in West Berlin, by dint of the fact that his mother had been visiting relations on the right side of the city when the border went up overnight. He'd made his money as a smuggler of goods to East Berlin and when the Iron Curtain crumbled in the late eighties, he had expanded into Eastern Europe, trading cars, drugs, cigarettes, weapons and women. Whatever the market demanded, Dieter Römermann could supply it – at an appropriate price, it was understood. He had come from no money to a having a superfluity and it was something he liked to remind people of.

"No," he continued, "I have a more practical use for you. You can have my marker, sure, and I can get you Zhi Wei and Miguel Romero's as well. That makes three. I'm pretty certain I can get Borotov to come on board and if he comes over, you'll have Milosav with him. That's five."  
He counted them on his fingers. "Who else? Well, obviously, the Japanese won't do any deals but if the Koreans side won't take our side – and they won't, we both know that – then you have a good chance that Arigato will throw his marker into the ring as well. So, six."  
"What do you want in return?" John said suspiciously. It was far too easy.  
"Well, see, I've been thinking about it a lot," Römermann said and raised the beer bottle to his lips. "The High Table worked very well for a long time but, you know, it's time we moved on and brought in a new structure."  
John was silent.  
"Why twelve seats?" Römermann said in a jolly tone. "We use the metric system nowadays, don't we? Ten seats! Ten is enough. One chairperson, nine members. Very good; nice round number."  
"But there are currently eleven seats," John said, "Until the D'Antonio family appoint a representative."  
"They won't," Dieter said. "The next in line is still a boy, can't even grow a proper moustache. They've forfeited their place by not having an heir."  
He dismissed it with a wave of his bottle.  
"So who will have to go?" John asked slowly and even as he asked, he felt a familiar chill in his stomach, that sinking feeling of a plummeting elevator.  
Dieter raised the bottle and drained it, not taking his eyes off John.  
"Who would you get rid of if you were in my place?" he asked slyly.  
"Margaret Bridgemont," he said so softly that Römermann instinctively leaned forward to hear him.  
"That bitch," Römermann said, "that bitch thinks she controls all of Europe. Well, she does not. She lives in a country that does not even want to be in the European Union, so why does she think that she can tell me what to do in my territory? Kill her, John Wick, and you will not only have all of the markers I promised, but you will have my protection as well."  
He placed the beer bottle carefully on the side table beside the sofa. He used a coaster, John noted, setting the bottle down delicately so it would not stain.  
"Deal?" he said and stretched out his hand.  
"I don't have much choice," he said sullenly.  
"Come on!" Dieter said. "Free passage in Germany, not one of my people will harm a hair on your head and I'll get you any help you need with papers and weapons - provided you get to London before the end of the week. It is … what do you Americans say? … a sweet deal."  
"For you," John said curtly. "The last person who tried to assassinate Margaret Bridgewood was fed his own testicles. While he was still alive. She gives a new meaning to the expression 'to go mediaeval' on someone."  
Dieter smiled at him pleasantly, not entirely understanding. "Well," he said happily, "More reason for her to go, don't you think?" He wiggled his hand a bit. "Come on, Mr Wick, deal?"  
John took his hand reluctantly and shook it.

Before he left, Gordana Römermann appeared in the kitchen in her dressing gown and Dieter left her with John while he went to fetch the marker. She tut-tutted at the fact that he had not been offered a beer or even a glass of water. She swiftly made him a sandwich, despite his protests, and wrapped it in wax paper while Dieter pricked his finger and placed his thumb-print on the vellum. Römermann handed John the marker, his wife pressed a wrapped sandwich and a bottle of mineral water into his hands.  
"For the journey," she said. "Don't throw the bottle away, it has a deposit on it. Fifteen cents," she said, as though it were a princely sum. It seemed an odd thing to mention in a kitchen probably worth twenty or thirty thousand euros, but she was probably the kind of woman who still saved wrapping paper and collected plastic bags.  
"Where are you staying?" Römermann asked, opening the front door.  
John hesitated. "Nuremberg," he said.  
"Hey, my son – " Römermann began and stopped. He peered into John's face, trying to assess what he knew.  
"Yes," John said and let the word hang in the air. "Good night. I'll be in touch tomorrow to let you know what I need. Please thank your wife for the sandwich."  
He waved at Gordana through the tall windows and made his way back down the darkened garden path. All the way down to the gate, the red dot sight danced teasingly on the path before his feet, as though leading him out of the Römermann residence. He saw no gunman, heard no sound. When he opened the gate, it jumped on to his chest and rested there for a second, maybe two. John looked around in the darkness. Then it disappeared.

He opened the gate silently and closed it behind him, hurrying down the dark street to his car.


	15. Chapter 15

"I'm not made of money!" Dieter Römermann protested. "You saw my house, John, did it look like the house of a billionaire?"  
Even over the loudspeaker they could detect the whine in his voice. Dieter Römermann might not have been a billionaire, but he swam comfortably in his millions.  
John said nothing; Anna rolled her eyes.  
"I've offered you what I can and there will be a premium for you when you get the job done."  
"We need the money beforehand," John insisted. "We can't buy weapons here, we'll be checked at the border. We need to buy guns in the UK. We may need new papers, and we have to stay somewhere for a few days – this all costs money, Dieter."  
"Yes, well, there are budget hotels in London," he said firmly. "Or Airbnb. This is more than enough to get the job done. I'll give you a few thousand in sterling for the journey and transfer the rest to a secure account."  
Anna stuck a finger down her throat, fake vomiting.  
"Another subject," Dieter said in a jolly tone. "When you come by to pick up the cash, my wife hopes you will stay for dinner."  
John looked at Anna, who made scissors-like _no-no-no_ gestures with her hands, shaking her head violently.  
"Eh," he said, thinking rapidly.  
" _Wunderbar_ ," Dieter said in satisfaction. "She will be very happy, she loves a dinner party."  
"I'm not alone," John blurted out. "I'm travelling with someone."  
"Oh?"  
"Miss Quinn," he said and Anna kicked him on the shins with her bare foot.  
"The more, the merrier!" Dieter shouted. "Bring her along! Gordana will be delighted! That's settled then. We see us on Thursday."  
And he hung up.

"Are you fucking _serious_?" Anna spat. "A dinner party with the Römermanns? Have you lost your mind?"  
"What could I say?"  
"No. You could have said no, you moron. It's a handy little word: N. O."  
"Dieter Römermann had a man killed because he called Mrs Römermann an Eastern European whore. I don't know what he'll do to us if we turn down her invitation to dinner. Didn't you hear? She'll be delighted."  
Anna started to laugh, a spluttering laugh. "This is getting more ridiculous by the day. First, he thinks we can get close enough to Margaret Bridgemont to kill her but before he sets us loose on her, he wants us to come by and eat canapés. Drink cocktails with one of the greatest psychopaths in Europe and his beloved wife."  
"She's a nice woman," John said.  
"How much does she know? I mean, about us."  
John shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine," he said.

... ... ...

They stood at the front door, Anna tugging at the bottom of her dress to pull it down closer to her knees. The garden was dark, silent. The only indication that anyone knew they were there was when they stood in front of the side gate and, without pressing any bell or buzzer, it clicked open to let them in. John raised his hand to ring the doorbell but Gordana Römermann flung open the door before he could touch it.  
" _John_!" she cried. Her face was wreathed in smiles, she looked like she was welcoming an old and dear friend. "And this is your girlfriend, no?"  
Anna opened her mouth but Gordana wrapped her in a hug, squashing the bouquet of flowers she held to her chest.  
"Come!" she said, linking arms. "The boys can talk business and we can pour the champagne. Come, come!"  
Anna looked back at John, bewildered. He gave her a wry wave.  
Dieter met them at the end of the hall. He was wearing a suit that had been tailored to fit his expanding belly.  
"Nice to see you again, Anna," he said and shook her hand. He looked at her, his face expressionless. "The last time we see us was ... let me see. When you travelled with Pfeiffer, or?"  
"Yes," she said.  
"Mark Pfeiffer?" Gordana said. "What a nice man. You did see him recently?"  
Anna glanced at Dieter and he gave her a warning look.  
"He's fine," she said in a small voice. "I don't hear much from him any more."  
Dieter nodded his head, the barest of moves.  
"A pity!" Gordana said, leading her off. "I like him very much. And so handsome. We had always very much fun when he came to visit."

She brought Anna into the kitchen, where a small woman was busy fixing some silver trays with tiny canapés. Anna tried not to smile as Gordana flew around the kitchen, taking a bottle out of the fridge, searching for glasses. She was a tall woman and still very handsome, the kind of lady who took great pride in her appearance. She took care of herself in the way someone might tend to an exotic plant, coaxing and creaming and soothing and smoothing her skin, her hair, her neck, her hands. But her immaculate appearance could not hide the anxious look she perpetually wore, and when her hands weren't busy, she turned the large diamond ring on her finger like a set of worry beads. Instinctively, Anna liked her. Immediately, she wondered what she was doing with someone like Dieter Römermann, a man whose reputation for ruthless and vicious behaviour preceded him wherever he went. Anna discreetly looked around as Gordana fussed about, looking for a tray to place the glasses on to carry them the few short steps to the dining table. She chatted away, often pausing momentarily to search for a word. Anna needed only to _hmm_ and _uh-huh_ , as her hostess was happy to talk and talk, like a woman who seldom had a listener. And while she talked, Anna discreetly looked around, trying to position the kitchen in relation to the garden and the streets around it, checking out the location of the doors, looking at the window glass and wondering how much it would take to break it.

John and Dieter stood over by the glass-fronted wall, deep in conversation.  
"Oh, the boys!" Gordana said with a tinkly laugh. "Always the business!"  
" _Mmm_ ," said Anna, still not sure what business was meant. She decided to change the subject. "You have a lovely home. It's a nice neighbourhood."  
Gordana sniffed, placing the glasses carefully on the table. The kitchen had been built on to the original house, protruding into the dark garden. The architect had designed a couple of skylights in the ceiling which made Anna almost feel as though the room were part of the outside surroundings. Low-lit by LED strip-lighting, it seemed as though she were on a stage or in the kind of glass box avant-garde artists do performance art.  
"I think to myself, such a nice neighbourhood. Maybe a chance to make friends here. But you know what? They are all very ... _hochnäsig_." Gordana pulled a face.  
"Snobby?"  
"Yes, always the high noses. We are not good enough for them. Maybe because I am a foreigner, but also maybe because Dieter made his money in export, you know? I think many of the neighbours are families with old money, children of the doctors, the lawyers. They don't like a businessman."  
John stepped in beside Anna and she discreetly pulled his sleeve.  
"Businessman?" Dieter asked, picking up a glass.  
"Yes, I say Anna that all the neighbours do not like us because you made your money in business."  
She handed John and Anna champagne glasses.  
"But he works in export," she protested. "It's not like he sells drugs! They just don't like someone who makes his money in business."  
There was a silence: one beat, two. Anna's fingers tightened on John's arm. Then Dieter raised his glass. "To business!" he called.  
"To business!" they echoed and drank.

Gordana said something in Serbian to the woman in the kitchen and the little woman left the room, wiping her hands on a cloth. She called her husband over to the sparkling countertop and they had a brief argument about what to serve first.  
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Anna hissed through the smile plastered over her face. "She doesn't seriously think her precious Dieter made his money exporting knick-knacks and tchotchkes?"  
"Maybe that's what she wants to believe."  
Anna shook her head.  
"It was the same with Helen," John whispered.  
She looked up at him, astonished.  
"Well, maybe not as bad," he confessed. "But she probably knew more than she wanted to know. She just pretended she didn't know it."  
"Seriously?"  
"We've got a lot of stuff to hide, Anna," he said, his face solemn. "If you're lucky, you find someone who gives you the chance to hide it."  
He lowered his head to look away so she couldn't see what he was thinking.  
"So, you must try this," Gordana said, placing the tray in front of them. "This is sausage from my hometown in Serbia – be careful, it's spicy!"  
They nibbled obediently and made appreciative noises. After a few minutes, Dieter led them across the room to the table, which had been set for four. The tableware glistened under the lamps, the cutlery lined up with military precision.  
"It's very beautiful," Anna said honestly and her hostess beamed with pride.

It was strange, Anna thought, under any other conditions it could've been a lovely evening. Perhaps it was Gordana's innocence – or wilful ignorance – that touched John, but he responded to her questions gently and kindly, quickly finding out what she was interested in and asked her about her garden, her work at the local refugee centre. She talked animatedly, searching for the right words in English, trying them in Serbian and German till Dieter or Anna came to her rescue and supplied her with a suggestion. Dieter kept his gaze on his wife, but once or twice Anna caught him watching her coolly, assessing her. He'd been a friend of Pfeiffer; she wasn't entirely sure whether she was breaking bread with him as friend or foe.

"So you are going next to England?" Gordana said as she served the dessert. She'd been disappointed that neither John nor Anna drank much of her wine and only sipped her Serbian schnapps, so Anna had felt obliged to eat a lot of dessert. It was the kind of sacrifice she didn't mind making, even if it meant enduring the sly grin on John's face as she tucked into her third slice of tiramisu.  
Still busy with her dessert, Anna nudged John to get him to answer.  
"Yes," he began slowly, but Gordana was already in full flow: "You Americans have very little holidays, yes? So you must do all of these crazy tours with many countries in one week. You need one week for Bavaria alone!"  
"Well, we have to return to work next week," John said, "so it's better than nothing, I guess."  
"Will you see Margaret when you are in England?" Gordana asked. "I'm sure you know her, Dieter says everyone who works in export knows Margaret."  
Anna shot a look at Dieter, cheeks chipmunk-full of cream. He returned her stare coldly. She swallowed fast.  
"We might," John said carefully. "I think she has a very busy schedule though, and we're not really here to work."  
"She is a wonderful woman," Gordana said, beaming at them all around the table. She had drunk a lot, her cheeks were a high red and she was full of praise for everyone. "We visit her always when we go to London – yes, Dieter? She is, I think, a very good friend. She texts me now and again and says, 'Hey Gordana, how are you?' So kind."  
"She texts you?" Dieter shot at his wife.  
"Yes," Gordana said, waving her hand expansively. "She gives me many good advices all the time."  
"Is that so?" her husband said.  
The words fell like broken glass on the table but his wife was too full of the joys of a cosy dinner party to notice.  
"You never told me that, _Schatz_ ," Dieter said. "Why didn't you tell me?"  
"Oh, _Liebling_ , these are woman's things. She recommended to me our interior designer and she found the sofa, remember that? She gives me advices about the dinner parties. When I told her about this one she sended me the recipe for the salmon – "  
"You told her about this one?" Dieter snapped.  
John and Anna looked at him, horror-struck, but he held up a hand warningly.  
"What did you tell her?" he asked in German.  
" _Ich weiß es nicht mehr,"_ she said. I don't know any more. " _Ich habe sie gefragt, was_ _Amerikaner so gerne essen."  
_ "She asked Margaret what she should make for American guests," Anna translated _sotto voce_.  
 _"_ _Hast du seinen Namen erwähnt?"_ Dieter asked. Did you mention his name?  
"Of course," Gordana said, surprised. "I asked if she knew John. My, you all know each other, I think? Why, Dieti?"

Römermann stood up, grabbed a remote control off a side table and started pressing buttons. The shutters started to glide down over the glass windows.  
"Bullet proof glass," he said to his guests, as they stood up, each looking around. "The best. Top of the range. Just a precaution. She's not a stupid woman, I hope."  
He picked up the phone and pressed a button. Through the receiver, Anna could hear the thin _beep_. He pressed another and they heard only static. Dieter looked at John and his face changed, his expression stony. John nodded.

Gordana turned her back on her husband and started to clear the table. She suddenly seemed determined to not to see what her spouse was doing, busying herself picking up the dirty cutlery. Anna glanced at her and her hostess nodded at a serving tray. Automatically, she started to gather up the dirty plates.  
"We can bring them to the kitchen," Gordana said brightly and she walked across the large room to the kitchen area, her face turned instinctively from the shuttered glass. Dieter was talking down the phone in urgent, angry German. John was standing by a wall next to one of the high windows, trying to find a crack to peer through.  
"So," Gordana said in the same cheerful tone. "I think we can just put this here till the morning, then the maid will clear it away. Maybe you and John would like a little coffee before you go?"  
Anna opened her mouth to respond but as she did, she saw a flash – just a glint, a momentary displacement of light, - reflected in the shining kitchen cupboard fronts. She looked around and, remembering the skylights, up. She saw the barrel of the gun and dived, pushing Gordana with her. But the older woman was much bigger and taller, and rather than allow herself to be pushed, she grabbed the countertop and tried to steady herself against Anna's weight. At the same time – before? Anna couldn't be sure, it happened so fast – the glass of the skylight shattered, falling like rain around them. She heard the light pad-pad-pad of someone running across the roof.

"John!" she yelled. Gordana started screaming; Anna ran to the kitchen door and started pounding the buttons on the control panel beside it. She ripped the door open and as soon as the shutter had been raised a couple of feet off the ground, she rolled through the small gap at the bottom and out on to the patio.  
" _Anna_ ," John hissed.  
She didn't answer, shedding her shoes and moving through the garden, slowly, carefully, close to the ground, watching out for motion sensors. Her dress caught on twigs, she felt her nylon stockings snag. In her head she tried to remember the layout of the garden, the walls, trying to figure out where someone might have scaled the walls or climbed the gate. As she moved carefully through the darkness, half-crawling, her hands touched brushed something and she snatched them back. It was a body – probably a security guard. Beginning to see a little in the dim light, she searched him for a taser or a gun but only found an empty holster.  
 _Shit_ , she thought, and crawled over the body, lying low in the grass.

The shutters on the house started to go up and, startled, she crouched behind a tree so she wouldn't be exposed by the light flooding the garden. Anna looked for John, he was nowhere to be seen; he was probably scouting the perimeter, trying to find out how the assassin had come in. Behind the kitchen island she saw Gordana's leg stick out, not moving. As the shutter rose, she saw the living room door open and the maid rush across the large room, throwing herself down at her employer's side.  
Dieter Römermann stood at the doors to the garden, flung open them open and shouted into the darkness in German:  
"Who are you? Who sent you?"  
Anna listened. To her left, she heard the tiniest rustle in response. It might've been a bird or some other nocturnal animal, but instinct told her that it was human.  
In English Dieter said, "You shot my wife, you bastard. You know what that means when I get you?"  
There was another rustle. She crawled towards the sound.  
"I will kill you," Dieter said confidently. Anna had to admire his balls, presenting himself to the darkness of the garden. Sure, if the unknown someone took a shot, he could've ducked behind his bullet-proof glass but chances were he wouldn't be fast enough.

Suddenly Dieter pressed a button in his remote control and the garden was lit by outside lights. Anna couldn't stop herself gasping, and nor could the man just metres away from her. On her hands and knees, he didn't see her at first and she used the advantage of precious seconds to launch herself at his legs and knock him over. She crawled up his body, trying to remember some jujitsu moves to keep him pinned down while she wrestled the gun from his hands. She was painfully out of practice and her opponent seemed to sense it. He pushed her off and tried to step back to aim his gun at her. Anna knew she had been trained in risk assessment and had practised for hours until her body moved in the rhythm of an appropriate martial response, but she was a few years older, a few years out of practice and a few years out of shape, so her body reverted to its instincts: she launched at him and tackled him the way she fought the kids at school who used to call her names. Grabbing his wrist, she tried to wrest the gun from his arm and when he tried to shake her off, twisting to point the gun at her, she sunk her teeth into his arm and bit him. He let her go with a yelp.

And he dropped the gun. She dived for it, but he grabbed her arm and tried to punch her. The punch missed its mark and hit her shoulder, and the dull crunch resonated down into her fingertips and up into her skull. She twisted, kicked him, connecting with his crotch and grabbed the gun triumphantly.  
 _"Wer sind Sie? Wer hat Sie geschickt?"_ she gasped, pushing stray hairs out of her eyes.  
She was sweating from the exertion and she had to yank her dress back down to cover her legs.  
"I'm not a fucking Kraut," the man said. "I don't fucking speak fucking German."  
"You're English," she said, heart sinking. "So Margaret Bridgemont sent you, right? Why the fuck did she think it would be a good idea to shoot Dieter Römermann's wife?"  
"The bullet wasn't meant for her, you dim bitch. It was meant for you - as a warning. She knows Dieter's got something planned with Wick, this was just to let them both know that she won't take no monkey business."  
"Yeah, well, Römermann won't be pleased with that."  
"You're going to have to kill me," the man said, suddenly urgent. "Let me go or kill me. Because if Römermann gets hold of me, you know what he's going to do."  
Anna hesitated. She knew he was right.  
"He's coming," the man said, fearful now, and frantic. They could hear Dieter talking to someone and the static of a walkie-talkie. "Either you kill me or you let me go. Do you hear me, you American whore? Kill me or let – "  
Anna shot him. He crumpled to the ground; she took a deep breath and rubbed her shoulder.

"You fight so – "  
Startled she looked up and saw John standing in the shadows, watching her.  
"Ugly?" she finished. "I fight so ugly? Say it, John. You fight like something from a Bruce Lee film, making the right little kung-fu noises, prancing around in your designer suit, while I fight like a bar-room brawler and get all hot and sweaty with my dress hoiked up around my underpants."  
She pulled the offending dress down again and tried to brush the dirt off.  
"It's not pretty, but I get the job done, man," she said.  
He grinned and checked the man, looking for his wallet or other weapons.  
She rubbed her shoulder again. It hurt, it really ached. She'd forgotten how violence felt; she'd forgotten the raw, jarring shock of something connecting with her bones and tissue with force and intent. Had it always felt this bad or had she just been numb to it? John jerked his head in the direction of the house and set off down the path. She followed him.

They went quickly back to the house, telling Dieter's guard on the way about the bodies in the garden. The floodlights were turned off again – probably to prevent any neighbours from seeing anything untoward – and John and Anna slipped back into the kitchen, closing the door behind them. Römermann was crouched beside his wife, who was lying in a pool of blood. His face was as pale as hers, he was gripping her hand.  
 _"Ich brauche einen Krankenwagen,"_ she whispered _. I need an ambulance._  
"I can't call an ambulance," Dieter answered her. "You know this, mein Schatz. We must wait for the doctor."  
"I need to go to the hospital," she said in German, her accent stronger in her distress, and a tear trickled down her cheek. "Why don't you call the police?  
Dieter looked up at them, his face helpless.  
"She wants the police, to go to the hospital," he explained to John. "The hospital!"  
He said it as though it were impossible; they all knew it was. How would he explain a gunshot wound to the emergency services? He couldn't and he wouldn't. It would remain, as it always did, within their limits of their world.  
"Is the doctor on the way?" Anna said.  
Römermann nodded and before he could say anything, they heard footsteps coming down the garden. Two men burst through the patio door, accompanied by the same guard, and they quickly knelt beside the bleeding women, throwing open their bags. Only one acknowledged their presence with a curt dip of his head, the other was already busy examining the wound.

Dieter grabbed Anna by the elbow.  
"Tell me," he said.  
"Bridgemont sent him to kill me, as a warning. She knows what you're up to and she wants you to stop."  
"That fucking bitch," he hissed. "She would dare send someone to my home - to my _home_?"  
He turned his back on them, thinking.  
John looked at her. Anna returned his glance and they waited in silence till Dieter turned around. He looked like a different man, not the jovial host that had led them to the dinner table. He had removed his jacket and his pale blue shirt was splattered with his wife's blood.  
"There is no going back," he said. "We will never work together on the High Table. One of us must go and as she made the first move, it must be her."  
John and Anna nodded.  
"I will give you anything you need to take her out," he said, looking at John. "Anything. Do you hear me? No limit – whatever it is you need, you get it. Tomorrow you call me with another list, a different list. You tell me what you want, I will get it for you. Then you go after her, bogeyman, and you kill her. And when you do that, you not only have my marker, you have my gratitude. You understand?"  
"I understand," John said quietly.  
"You can go," Dieter said imperiously. Anna opened her mouth, turned to where Gordana lay, but John took her hand and led her away.

They drove in near silence back to Nuremberg, remarking only on the traffic, the music on the radio. At the hotel John organised a bag of ice and wrapped it in a towel. She pressed it against her shoulder, wincing at the cold. He sat beside her on the bed and she leaned her head against his shoulder.  
"I'm sorry you got hurt," he said.  
She nodded. "Do you think Gordana will recover?" she asked. "I feel so bad, John, I really do. I tried to push her out of the way but she wouldn't move."  
John put his arm around her. "You did the right thing," he said. He paused. "And you did well."  
She looked up at him. In the dim light of the hotel bedroom, his eyes were almost black, serious and grave. She reached up and stroked his cheek, feeling the bristly hair of his beard. The cuts on his face were healing, small bumps on his skin.  
"Thanks," she whispered, then eased herself into a standing position and went into the bathroom.  
"Even if I fight ugly?" she called mischievously into the bedroom, as she turned the water on in the shower.  
John laughed aloud.  
"Especially when you fight ugly, Miss Quinn," he called back.


	16. Chapter 16

"That's not the way a man's wife behaves," Michael Black snapped. "That's the way his whore acts, Miss Quinn."  
Anna sighed and rolled her eyes, then turned to face Black with an insolent look on her face and her hand on her hip.  
" _What_?" she snapped.  
Mr Black stared at her till she withered beneath his gaze, and then continued:  
"If you are to convince anyone that you are married, then you have to start acting like his wife. You're all over him like a rash, like a cheap trollop being paid to be nice to him."  
"He doesn't mind," Anna said and jerked her head at John, who was standing with his hands in his pockets, moving uncomfortably from one foot to another.  
"He does," Mr Black said. "You're doing it deliberately to disconcert him, Miss Quinn. You like to make him feel awkward; it makes you feel superior. Stop being so nasty."

Black watched his protégés' faces redden: John glanced at him, and then looked down, two spots of dull colour on his high cheekbones. Anna glared at him angrily, defiantly, her face an livid red at being caught in her game.  
"As for you, Mr Wick," he continued, "You need to grow a pair of balls. Yes, you heard me. Develop a backbone, child. Stop looking at her like a lovesick cow, falling all over your own feet like a fool. Cut it out, Miss Quinn – " he snapped warningly when he saw her smirk. "Do you two not realise how serious this is? You want to get into the embassy dinner as Mark van den Berg, heir to Van den Berg Diamonds, loving husband of seven years to Mrs Kathy van den Berg. Never mind that neither of you bears even a passing resemblance to the Van den Berg couple, much less the fact that you are a good decade younger than either of them. If anyone manages to overlook these glaringly obvious details and if our sources are correct and there is no one on the guest list who knows them personally – if all of this should be the case, - "  
He paused to draw a breath –  
"You will not have a snowflake's chance in hell if _you don't start acting like you're married!"_

They stared at him, startled. He rarely raised his voice or lost his cool but time was running out and he was losing patience. He'd spent the morning talking them through the layout of the embassy, the guest list, then preparing them to behave appropriately in the presence of the other dignitaries present. He'd told them to simply behave like a married couple but instead John had spent his time hovering over his little partner, his hand firmly planted on her back or, more daringly for him, just above the rise of her backside. Anna, for her part, was enjoying hamming it up in her new dress, clinging to John and fingering the diamond necklace that she was being allowed to wear for the evening. She was enjoying getting John all hot and bothered, moving sinuously under his hand as she pretended to greet bishops and baronesses.

"Look," Black said, "it's not just about the weapons, about the training. Your lives depend on this just as much, if not more."  
"Sorry," John mumbled, always first to apologise.  
"How do you want us to behave?" Anna asked, still defiant. "Instead of telling us what not to do, why don't you tell us what we should do?"  
"Behave like a happily married couple," he said simply. "Is it that hard?"  
He looked at them: John and Anna glanced at each other – Anna confused, John embarrassed – and he realised that they couldn't do what he'd asked because they didn't know how to do it. He racked his brains to remember what he'd gleaned about their backgrounds. Miss Quinn had been viciously reticent about her family. If her parents weren't dead, they were certainly dead to her. John had said more, but more as an aside. Black couldn't remember if he knew who his real father was, but there was a succession of stepfathers and 'uncles' who'd treated him with varying degrees of civility but with little respect and less love. With a sigh he realised that his students couldn't complete his task because they genuinely didn't know what to do.  
"Come on," he said. "We'll take a break and get some lunch."

He made them change out of the evening wear they'd been practising in – Anna reluctantly handed over the necklace – and back into their regular clothes. Then they left the suite of the London Continental and walked down the streets, huddled together against the February rain.  
"In here," Black said and pushed over the door of a pizzeria. The words _Family Friendly_ were emblazoned on the door and Anna pulled a face. They sat together in a booth, Anna squashed against the window with John beside her, careful not to touch her. Black sat opposite them.  
"Look around," he said. "Who's married? Who's been together a long time?"  
Obediently they looked around, pretending to study the décor.  
"Those two," John said and discreetly nodded at a couple in the corner. The woman had a child on her knee and was busy cutting up her pizza into small pieces. The man was busy with another child.  
"The children kind of give it away," Anna said sarcastically.  
Black ignored her. "How do they behave towards each other?"  
The pair watched them.  
"They ignore each other," Anna said after a few minutes. "More or less."  
"Do they?" questioned Mr Black.  
"No," John said. "They're aware of each other all the time. She just filled his glass without his asking. He pushed an extra napkin over to her when the baby wiped some sauce on her sleeve."  
"Their legs?"  
"Their legs are touching," John said. "Not entwined or anything, but they're in each other's space and neither feels the need to move."  
"Right. Anna?"  
"They look at each other a lot. I mean, they're busy with the kids and stuff, but they look at each other and, you know, raise an eyebrow or smile or whatever."  
"Good," Mr Black said. "And do you know what this is? This is intimacy, my young friends. This is what people do when they are relaxed in each other's presence. When they know the other person like the back of their hand. No need to paw each other or gawp at each other all the time. You just _be_ with each other. Do you get me?"  
John and Anna nodded.  
"Now be married," he hissed as the waitress approached their table.

Anna moved across the seat to be closer to John and he casually put a long arm across the back of the seat. They didn't look at each other but Anna straightened his cutlery, placing the knife in the centre of the folded napkin.  
"Drives him nuts," she said to the waitress with a laugh.  
"My husband's the same," she said and they smiled at each other in fake exasperation – men and their funny little ways, eh?  
"You want to get a Hawaiian so we can share?" John asked.  
"Last time you said you wanted to try the chicken," Anna answered. "But we can get one of each, right?"  
"One of each," John said "And two cokes, please. No ice for hers."  
The waitress wrote it down.  
"I'll have a margherita," Mr Black said. "And an ice water."  
He waited till the waitress left. "Not bad," he said. "Getting better. From now on, I want you two to be in each other's space. And I think you're going to have to start sharing a hotel room – don't argue, Anna. What you do behind closed doors is no business of mine unless you make it business of mine, you hear? You'll have to work as a couple so for all intents and purposes you two will have to become a couple, get it?"  
They nodded.  
Michael Black sat back against the bench, satisfied.

Black waited till John had gone to the restroom.  
"Stop being so cruel to him, Anna," said Mr Black. At the use of her first name, she blinked and fidgeted with her fork. "It's just a crush. He's only a young guy, he can't help it."  
She said nothing.  
"There's no need to punish him for liking you."  
"Yeah, well, he shouldn't."  
"Shouldn't like you? Why not?"  
"He'll only end up getting hurt," she said curtly. "Best to stop it before it goes any further."  
Mr Black sat back against his chair, looking at her. She kept her head down, straightening and re-straightening her knife.  
"He's too soft," she muttered. "It makes him vulnerable. He has to toughen up."  
"So you're being mean to him to toughen him up?"  
She shrugged and looked out the window.  
"I don't know why he likes me anyway," she said with the same defiant jut to her chin. "There's not much to like."  
Mr Black regarded her. She still wouldn't meet his eye, pretending to study the red bus passing by the window and the people scurrying past in the rain.  
"You are not unlikeable, Anna," he said gently. "There is a lot about you to be liked."  
"Yeah, well," she said, a complete sentence that spoke volumes: if you think so. Whatever.  
They sat in silence for a couple of seconds.  
"We all know we could die at any time," Anna said, suddenly looking him in the eye. "It'll probably be me first. He won't be able to cope."  
"He's tougher than you think," Black said. "John is stronger than you give him credit for. It's you that I worry more about, you know? What if John goes first? Will you cope?"  
"I have more practice," she said. "I've done it before."  
She stared at him and, though not normally intimidated, Michael Black suddenly felt no desire to question her further. He looked away.

"What have you done before?" John said, sliding into the seat beside her. She looked up at him and smiled, patted his leg. There was, suddenly, something different between them and both John and Mr Black felt it. The edge that had always been between Miss Quinn and Mr Wick was gone.  
"Met a bishop," Anna said wrly. "Blackie asked me if I'd ever met a bishop before and I said, sure, I'm an Irish Catholic, I've met loads of them."  
She was an easy liar; John's face broke into a grin. "Loads of them?" he repeated.  
"Tons," she said confidently. "At least two."  
And they both laughed.  
"Good," said Mr Black. "Like that. Keep that up."  
He nodded at Anna and she nodded back.

... ... ...

"Would you like me to book you a table in our restaurant?" the receptionist said.  
"No, thank you," Anna said in an English accent. "We're going out tonight."  
And she smiled over at John.  
"Special occasion?" the receptionist enquired.  
"Our anniversary," Anna said with a touch of pride. "Nineteen years this year."  
"Congratulations!" the receptionist said. "You'll have to plan something big, then, for next year."  
"We'll think of something," she replied.  
"Well, I can recommend La Scala for an anniversary dinner," the receptionist continued. "It's just a couple of streets down from here and the food is seriously delicious."  
"Thanks so much," Anna said, "but we've already got a reservation."  
With a gun dealer who'd been sent Dieter Römermann's list and later on with a forger who was going to get them the papers they needed.  
"Anything else I can get you then?" the receptionist asked.  
"I think we're okay ... but if you could ask for a pot of coffee to be sent up to our room, I'm sure my husband would appreciate it."  
John nodded.  
"Of course, no problem," the woman said. She handed Anna the key card. "Enjoy your stay, Mr and Mrs Black. I hope you have a lovely anniversary."

... ... ...

Thank you very much for your comments - much appreciated!


	17. Chapter 17

Dieter's contact in London was a guy called Rat. At least, that's what he told them his name was and neither of them pressed to know more. In any case, he was well-named: he had a thin face that bore the craters of acne scars and narrow, jittery eyes that couldn't settle on anything for more than a few seconds before skittering off to a new focus. He was small and thin and walked with his back hunched over, sucking on a cigarette with a strange aggression, wearing no coat in the cold weather, just an Adidas jogging suit that he'd probably never jogged in. Unless running from the police counted as jogging. John couldn't guess his age: he might've been in his twenties or some time in his thirties, but Rat was the product of several generations of poor nutrition, heavy smoking and serious drinking, and his face had probably never had a trace of boyish innocence. He'd probably been born with that same distrustful look.

"Awright?" he said by way of greeting and flung himself into the seat opposite them. John had chosen the cafe in Shepherd's Bush, thinking that Dieter's man would blend in among the tourists and shoppers, office workers on their lunch break. Instead, Rat slouched down into his chair with a sniff and immediately started jiggling a leg, as though his limb were getting ready to take off while the rest of him was stuck at the table with John and Anna.  
"You the Blacks?" he said to Anna. "I thought you was going to be, like, real blacks."  
His accent was extremely difficult for John to follow: _I fought you was gowin to be, loike, real blacks._  
"Africans," he hissed at their confused faces. "Black blacks."  
"No, that's just our name," Anna said. She nudged John under the table with the tip of her shoe.  
"Yeah," he sneered. "I see that."  
He fiddled with his eyebrow piercing and grabbed a menu. When the waiter came by, barely able to conceal his disapproval of the customer in front of him, Rat snapped "A coffee, like, a normal coffee. None of your fancy shit," at him and sank even further into his chair.

Anna nudged John again with her shoe and he stomped on her foot to stop her. He knew that she was not impressed by Rat – she'd been predisposed to neither like nor trust him as soon as Dieter had told them his name. Rat wasn't a professional; at least, he was not a professional in their sense. But, as Dieter pointed out, if they wanted help from someone who wouldn't trade them in for a handsome lump sum, they'd have to travel down the food chain till they found a bottom-dweller like Rat who was too far from the know to hear about the reward on their heads. He'd been offered ten thousand pounds to get them into wherever they wanted to go; he knew they were an American couple, the Blacks, and that was about it.

"So, guv," said Rat, "I hear you is looking for a way into a house on Lower Regency Square?"  
Instantly, John and Anna looked around. Sensing their panic, Rat lowered his voice.  
"Sorry," he said.  
"Yes," John said softly. "Have you checked it out?"  
"Won't be easy," Rat said accepting his coffee from the waiter without giving him as much as a glance. "Like I says to Dieter: I can get you into most people's gaff no problem, but this one is really tough. This one is more like a twenty thousand pound job than a ten thousand pound job."  
A sly look crossed his face. John and Anna were silent, staring at him, till Rat squirmed and pretended to stir his coffee.  
"Get us in and out of there," John said finally, "And there'll be a two thousand pound bonus for you."  
"Five."  
"Five," agreed John. "Are you sure you can do this?"  
"Been in there already," he said proudly. "'Course, I didn't see much of the house but I can get you in."  
"How did you get in?" Anna asked.  
The same sly look flitted across Rat's face. "That's none of your beeswax," he said. "You'll find out soon enough. Tonight, isn't it? Meet you there at 3 a.m. There's a change of shift just before three, the guards get together for the handover. We have about five or ten minutes before they go back on patrol."  
He stood up from the table, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.  
"See ya," he said, digging in his pocket for a packet of cigarettes.

"We have no choice," John said before Anna could comment. "Besides, Dieter said he'll get us in."  
"There must be a better way," she replied. "I think we should try an old-style assassination – sniper position, get her on her way in or out of her car. It's efficient and it's quick."  
"The city is on red alert after the terrorist attacks," John pointed. "We can't do this in the open."  
"She knows we're coming," Anna said. "She's not going to be sitting at home waiting for us."  
"Hopefully she'll think we wouldn't be stupid enough to retaliate for Dieter by going after her at home," he replied. "We know she's leaving for New York on Friday; I don't know what she's got planned but I suspect we should get to her before she leaves."  
Anna drank her coffee silently.  
"I don't like it," she said finally. "I think there's a better way, but I just don't know what it is."  
John shrugged.  
"Well, you're the boss," Anna said. "But you know what Winston says: you're going to be the death of me, John Wick."

Lower Regency Square had been built in the 1700s in a style considered daring when first built. The impressive doorways were framed by columns and flanked by tall windows; the square had four identical terraces of white stucco houses and a small private park in the middle. Anna had looked up the area on the internet and discovered that Margaret Bridgemont lived cheek by jowl – if the majestic terraced houses counted as being cheek by jowl - with a successful Broadway director, a lord and a viscount. Bridgemont'd moved up in the world from the council house she'd been born in near Birmingham, to be sure. They'd pored over the architectural plans for the house that Dieter had somehow procured: Bridgemont had renovated extensively and they had floor-plans that showed each storey and the layout of the rooms. Anna had whistled at some of the details: the whirlpool in the garden, the wine cellar, the seven bathrooms. No expense had been spared. One after another they'd walked by the house, looking at it from the outside, trying to gauge the location of the rooms in relation to the windows facing the street, trying to figure out where to park a car or whether to disappear into the nearest underground station and hide in plain sight on the Tube. They finally decided to drive, parking the car a couple of streets away, then making their way separately to their rendezvous with Rat.

John and Anna stood apart in the shadows, but the street was quiet and there were few lights to be seen behind any of the windows.  
"Awright?" Rat said casually and Anna jumped. John looked over and followed them as Rat walked briskly down the street, staying in the shadows, only seen by the light of his cigarette.  
"Where are we going?" Anna whispered.  
"Round back," replied Rat and he took them to the end of the street, turned left and then left again. The street they turned into was also made up of terraced houses but they were nowhere near as posh as the ones on Lower Regency Square.  
"This way," he said. He slipped down a narrow alley between two houses, probably a tradesman's entrance to the back yards, and his two customers followed. At the end of the little lane, he stubbed out his cigarette and, with surprising elegance, quickly scaled the wall around someone's yard. John and Anna followed; John first, extending a hand to pull her up. They walked quickly along the top of the wall and followed Rat when he scrambled up on to the top of a garage.  
"Come on," he said. "Look sharp."  
He ran lightly across the flat garage roof, sticking to the shadows, then stopped.  
"That's 'ers," he said. "That's 'er place."  
Despite the impressive facades, none of the houses had large gardens. They weren't much more than neat little patios, with landscaped paths and small water features subtly lit by dim outdoor lighting.  
"We're going in the back door?" Anna asked.  
Rat snorted.  
"No," he said, as though she'd asked something remarkably stupid. "See that house there? It's all flats and it's got a fire escape out the back, hasn't it? Fire regulations. We go up the fire escape, up on to the roof and across to hers. She fucking done the place up like a fucking magazine centrepiece but like most toffs, she didn't bother getting the maids' rooms done. Dodgy window, second from left."  
He pulled a Swiss Army knife from his pocket: "Don't even need no special tools. Little wriggle under the frame with this and Bob's your uncle."

"Across the roofs?" Anna said. Even in the darkness, John could see her pale.  
"Not afraid of heights, is you?" Rat sneered. "'Coz if you is, you is not going to like this."  
"I'll be fine," she said resolutely.  
Rat sniffed and set off across the flat garage roofs, running carefully along the top of the garden walls.  
"Are you sure?" John said softly. "You can wait here."  
"No," she said. "Let's do this. Let's do it and get it over with."  
She stuck out her hand. "Good luck, Mr Wick."  
"Good luck, Miss Quinn. Head back to the hotel as soon as it's done. Don't wait for me, you hear?"  
"Aye, aye, sir," she said and set off after Rat, choosing her step carefully in the darkness.

"Do you want to go first?" John whispered. There was quite a jump from the top of the fire escape to the narrow ledge that ran along the bottom of the gutters. Rat was already metres away, his fingers grasping the roof slates, his head twisted around to see what was taking so long.  
"I can't," she whispered.  
"I'll go first and you jump to me," John said. He did, steadying himself. Anna gasped and instinctively took a step back.  
"Come, Anna," he said, stretching out a hand. She gulped, swallowed, climbed on to the railing and steadied herself for a second before she jumped. John grabbed her arm and pulled her in, the back of his hand brushing against her chest as she found her footing. He thought he could feel her heart thumping against the thin material of her black shirt.  
"You okay?" he whispered.  
She said something but no sound came out.  
"Focus on your next step," he said. "Think of nothing else, just your next step."  
She nodded and they sat off. Rat went ahead of them moving – well, moving like a rat. Short, quick darting motions as he moved from one roof to another. Lighter than John, he made no sound. John had to move more slowly so his feet would not dislodge slates or slip on the wet rooftop. Anna followed behind him, her silence so grim it was almost audible. She moved like a crab, sideways across the roof, looking for foot and handholds, concentrating on nothing but what was directly in front of her face.

Rat went ahead, lowered himself over the edge of the roof and crouched on the window ledge, his fingers gripping the frame as he fished out his knife. John couldn't see what he was doing but there was a small creak and then he heard Rat hiss, "Come on!"  
John lowered himself after him, his feet finding the window frame, then sliding in. He took a couple of seconds to look around. It looked like some kind of storage room. Rat put his finger to his lips and jerked a thumb at the walls on either side, then made a gesture to show that people were sleeping next door.  
"Quinn," John whispered. "Come on."  
"I don't think I can," came the answer.  
"Get down here," he hissed and Rat's finger flew to his lips.  
There was a silence and then John heard her climb towards the edge of the roof. Moments later, her legs dangled over the edge. He grabbed them through the open window and pulled her in. She was shaking.  
"I fucking hate heights," she said.  
"Wuss," Rat muttered.

They set off down the dark corridor, leaving Rat behind. If they weren't back in twenty minutes, he was to take off back the way he came. He nodded and sneaked over to the window so he could light another cigarette.  
"Don't be seen," John warned.  
"I ain't stupid," replied Rat disdainfully.

"Are you okay?" John's gun was drawn, he didn't take his eyes off the darkened stairs. But he could feel Anna's disquiet behind him.  
"Fine," she whispered.  
"Plan still on?"  
"Of course," she said.  
As plans went, it was simple. Anna would slide into Bridgemont's bedroom and kill her before the other woman knew she was there; John would hold off anything that came for her. When they reached the landing above the second floor, they heard whispered voices. Looking around, Anna pointed at the long curtains and John slipped behind one. She dropped on her hands and knees and crawled under an ornamental table, drawing her legs in and making herself very small. Two men walked past, one holding a gun by his side. As Anna watched, John slipped out from behind the curtain and pulled the armed man down, covering his mouth as he pulled him to the floor. Anna scrambled out and put her gun to the other man's back, shooting him fast and silently, then pulling him behind the curtain. She yanked the table aside as John straddled the other man, smacking his arms down, then pressing his hands against his throat till his opponent was silent. The man lay limply beneath him and the house was once again quiet.  
In all, it had taken a matter of minutes.

 _"Wow,"_ Anna mouthed, impressed. Things rarely went this smoothly.  
"No guns till you're inside," John whispered. "They can be heard, even with the silencer."  
Anna nodded.  
"They were the next shift," John said and moved lightly down the grand staircase. He peeped down the corridor where Bridgemont's bedroom was. The men on duty outside the door were looking at their watches. One made a gesture at the bedroom door but the other shook his head and nodded at the stairway. Apparently deciding he would go to check what was going on, he set off down the corridor, his gun drawn. John pulled her back into the shadows, waiting till the man had reached the top of the stairs, then attacked him.

Anna stood aside. She didn't need to intervene: John could kill a man with his bare hands in a matter of seconds. She'd always had a curious pleasure in watching him fight: he moved slowly, hesitantly, in many other areas of his life but when he fought he did so with precision and speed, moving as elegantly as a dancer.

They laid the third man beside the other two.  
"Do we wait for the other guy?" she whispered.  
"He'll raise the alarm," John said. "I'll take him, you get into that room, you hear? Be careful, you know she could have the placed wired or trapped."  
Anna counted off on her fingers: one, two, three, and they moved down the stairs. The guard was looking at his watch again and didn't see them descend. John ran down the corridor in long strides and knocked the gun out of his hands. The man tried to yell but John smacked a hand over his mouth and pushed him down, jabbing and kicking as the other man fought back. Without looking to see how John was doing, Anna opened the door of Bridgemont's room and silently slid in on her hands and knees, closing it behind her. The room was quiet, no indication that the noise had woken their target. But Anna knew to be very careful. She tightened the grip on her gun and moved infinitesimally, barely covering a couple of inches as her eyes adjusted to the dark and she managed to locate the bed.

The corridor outside was quiet. But so was the room inside. Anna couldn't even hear breathing, but she could make out a form in the bed. Her gut told her something was wrong, but she had to go ahead with it, she had to approach the bed. Crouched down, inching along, her eyes alert for even the slightest movement, the slightest sound in the darkness, she got close to the bed. It was on a raised carpeted platform and Anna could see the person in the bed moving barely as they inhaled and exhaled. She ascended the steps to stand by the bed and then she straightened up, slowly, quietly, and pointed her gun.  
The person in the bed sat up suddenly and swiped at her arm. Anna shot the gun, blasting a bullet through the headboard.  
"Hey, bitch," said Tommy Aimes and she cried out, stepping backwards and falling down the three carpeted steps. Her tailbone probably hurt, but Anna felt no pain, didn't know where her gun was. All she could see was the figure in the darkness, pointing his weapon at her. She was terrified, paralysed.  
"You've had this a long time coming," the man said.  
Anna found her voice.  
"John!" she cried, and even to her own ears, her voice sounded alien. Like an animal's.  
The door burst open and Anna rolled, even as a bullet whizzed past her ear, finding the wall. In the dim light of the bedroom, she saw John tackling Aimes, struggling to pull the gun out of his hand. Aimes shot, this time into the ceiling. A shower of plaster covered them both.

She realised she was shaking, shaking so badly that she couldn't pick up her fallen gun. Her fingers simply wouldn't close around the handle, her teeth were chattering, banging together to make a clattering sound that echoed in her skull. Anna inched along the wall, then dropped down by Margaret Bridgemont's dressing table and into the space made for chair, drawing her knees up to her chin, wrapping her arms around her legs to make herself as small and compact as possible. She could hear John grunt, the sound of a bullet, and she started to cry. If the bullet had hit John, Aimes would come for her next. He'd seen her. He knew she was in the room somewhere. He'd find her in her crawlspace and drag her out by the hair. He'd –

John looked in under the table and pulled her out.  
"Is he dead?" she said, her voice shaky, hysterical. "Where's Tommy Aimes?"  
"It's not Tommy," John said sharply. "You know Tommy's dead, Quinn. It's one of his brothers. It was a trap, Bridgemont set a trap."  
"It was Tommy," Anna insisted. "I know his voice, John, I know what he sounds like."  
"It wasn't Tommy," John hissed. "We have to get out of here. Pull yourself together, Quinn."  
He bent to pick up her gun and shoved it into her hands, yanked her out of the room. Two men were coming down the corridor. John shot them both, then tossed his gun aside and grabbed Anna's. She was limp, like a rag doll, allowing herself to be pulled along, her head twisted backwards as though she was expecting Aimes to show up behind them. He half-dragged, half-pulled her down the stairs, down into the grand hallway with the front door, depositing her in a little alcove with a Greek statue when they were approached by a large man with something that looked like the large batons carried by riot police. John took a deep breath and pointed his gun, shooting once and missing. The man launched himself at him and John tried to fend off his blows, tried to twist around to point his gun. With a great effort, he managed to jamb the weapon between them and pulled the trigger.

John looked over at Anna. She'd sunk to her knees again, was crouched in a foetal position with her arms around her knees, her eyes wild.  
"Get out of here," he said, indicating the door. "You know what to do. Go – run!"  
"Yeah, run, you fucking bitch," came a voice from above them. "But I will fucking get you and what my brother did to you will be a walk in the park compared to what I've got planned for you."  
Anna looked over at John, her face full of anguish, distorted with fear. John grabbed her arm and pulled her into a standing position, moving towards the front door with his gun at the ready. The man John had shot came down the stairs, his hand covering his bloody stomach. He took aim at John, who ducked and pulled Anna with him. With scrabbling hands, Anna undid locks and opened the door. She twisted out of John's grip and ran down the steps of Bridgemont's house, violently shoving the man who tried to grab her on the footpath. John fired a warning shot at Aimes, managing only to hit his knee or leg, then shot the man sprawled on the ground outside.  
"Anna!" he shouted down the dark street, but she was gone.  
With a sigh he took off down the street, moving as quickly as he could to get back to their car. He knew he didn't need to wait for Anna; she had bolted. She was gone. She'd turn up again when she thought it was safe.  
Whenever that may be.


	18. Chapter 18

_Possible trigger warning for victims of abuse. Please proceed carefully._

Cautiously, John opened their hotel room door. She was sitting on the chair, drinking red wine from her toothbrush mug.  
"I ... " he hesitated, "I'm glad you made it back okay. You _are_ okay, aren't you?"  
"Fine," she said curtly.  
"I spoke to Dieter," he said, "And he's not surprised she tried to trap us – but neither were we, right? She's probably in New York already, so that's where we have to go next."  
"Okay."  
"If you're still ... " he searched for the right word, "...willing to go after her."  
"I'm more than willing," she said, "I'm fucking _dying_ to go after her. She put Tommy Aimes' brother in that room for me. I want to hunt that witch down and stake her."  
"You're sure you're okay?" he said again, feeling worried. She was watching him with an odd look on her face.  
"Sure. Still have my hair, right?" she answered.

... ... ...

The night it happened – in his head, John couldn't call it what it was, he just thought of it as 'the night it happened' – he'd returned after a couple of drinks in the Continental bar with Markus and Winston. She'd been in the bathroom, which hadn't struck him as odd. At first. After half an hour of silence, he knocked on the door, then pushed it open. She'd been standing over the sink, leaning over it, her head down. The shower was still steaming, there were towels all over the floor. And the bathroom sink was full of her hair: she'd taken her nail scissors to her head and hacked it all off. In shock, he'd pushed in and whirled her around. She wouldn't look at him, kept ducking her head, but he could see her lip was swollen and bloody.  
"What happened?" John had said, following her out of the bathroom. On her lower leg there were three livid red streaks – finger-marks, he'd realised. Someone had grabbed her leg with such force that her skin still bore the impressions of his fingers.  
"Anna," he said and tried to touch her shoulder, but she shrank back from him, wriggling out of his touch.  
"No," she said, gathered up her clothes and went back into the bathroom, twisting the key in the lock before he could follow her.

He waited on the bed, heard the sound of the shower, and waited. Eventually she came out again and he jumped up when he saw her. Above the neckline of the shirt she wore to bed there were scratches and bruises.  
"Anna," he said quietly, "tell me what happened."  
She looked at him and he felt that familiar icy feeling creep up his stomach, like a cold tide.  
"Tommy Aimes happened," she said. "My own fault."  
A buzzing filled John's ears, a wave of red rage clouded his vision. He looked around for his gun, grabbed it and hissed, "Stay here."  
Anna flung herself at him, her fingernails digging into his arms, her heels into the carpet.  
"No, John!" she cried.  
"That fucker," John spat, "That fucking motherfucker – "  
"No killing on Continental grounds," she said. "John, please, you know what'll happen. Please."  
"No killing? But this – _this_ is okay?" he cried.  
She started to cry, hiding her eyes behind her hands.  
"Please, John, let's just forget this ever happened. It was my own fault."  
"This is not your fault," he hissed.

Anna wouldn't let him leave. He finally persuaded her to go downstairs to Winston's office, which she did, reluctantly. She stayed by his side, looking around furtively, starting at every noise. When Winston called for them to come in, she'd darted into his office and found a seat furthest from the door.  
"Little birdie," Winston cried, "what happened?"  
She looked away, silently.  
"What happened?" he asked John. "And what on earth happened to her hair?"  
"Tommy Aimes assaulted her," John said, bile rising in his stomach.  
His words hung in the air between them. Winston looked from one to the other, the expression on his face changing from confused to concerned, to furious.  
" _Assaulted_ her?" he repeated icily. "Is this true, Miss Quinn?"  
She looked up so he could see her battered face.  
"He just ... beat you?" Winston asked, his voice barely above a whisper.  
She looked at him, then slowly shook her head and looked down.  
"I am going to kill him," John said. He was agitated, pacing back and forth, clenching and unclenching his long fingers. "You can excommunicate me, Winston, I swear to God I'm going to kill him."  
"No, John, you are not," Winston said firmly. "You are not going to kill him, do you hear? This is tantamount to signing your own death warrant. Kill one of the Aimes brothers and the other two will not rest till they have you. No, this is a matter for the High Table. He will be punished and Anna will be compensated."

John pushed up against Winston, his face just inches from the other man's.  
"Compensated?" he bit the words out. " _Compensated_? I'll compensate him with a bullet through his head."  
"No, John," Anna said, her voice distorted through the swollen lip. "Leave it. It was my own fault."  
" _It's not your fault!_ " he shouted, and Winston grabbed his arm to calm him down.  
"Why is it your fault, birdie?" he asked gently.  
Anna took a deep breath. "Last night he was ... picking on John. He said ... He called him stuff."  
"Stuff?"  
She shrugged. "A faggot. A pussy. Things like that. So I ... gave him a piece of my mind."  
"You defended John?"  
She nodded.  
"And, knowing you, you made our dim-witted friend, Tommy Aimes, look stupid in front of his equally dim friends."  
She nodded again.  
"And this is what he did to get his own back?" Winston said.  
He looked from her to John and back again.  
"I don't think mocking him merits an assault of this nature, Anna. I'm with John on this: it is most certainly not your fault."  
"Yeah," she said bitterly, "I'm sure everyone who hears of it will say it was my own fault for getting mixed up with a thug like Tommy Aimes. I should've known better."  
Winston shook his head, clicking his tongue in disapproval.  
"And he ... cut off your hair?" he asked.  
"No, I did it," she said.  
She paused and said softly, "He held me down by my hair."  
She bowed her shorn head. John pushed past Winston and went outside into the corridor to get some air. He saw the men's restroom and went in. Seeing his reflection in the mirror, his stomach heaved and he vomited in one of the toilets.

When he came back in, Anna was in Winston's inner office, writing up an account of what had occurred.  
"The Aimes brothers are packing their bags as we speak," Winston said, straightening his cravat. "They will not be welcome back at the New York Continental for as long as I am manager here."  
"That's it?" John asked. "Kick them out with a smack on the wrist?"  
"Jonathan," said Winston quietly, "there are rules. This will be dealt with accordingly. It will go before the High Table and Thomas Aimes will be punished. As a keeper of these rules, a guardian of our codex, I am compelled to tell you that you may not seek revenge on your own accord, as this will constitute a violation of our canon of laws. Do you understand me?"  
"But I – "  
"Do you understand me?" Winston repeated.  
Reluctantly, John nodded.  
"However, as a personal friend of Miss Quinn," Winston continued, suddenly preoccupied with straightening his cuffs, "I could imagine feeling sorely tempted to wait until this incident has been accorded the due wisdom of the High Table and then, with a minimum of fuss and in a manner that would never be traced back to me, deal with Mr Aimes in a way I saw fitting."  
He glanced at John's earnest face.  
"If you see what I mean," he said delicately.

Anna opened the door.  
"There," she said and thrust a piece of paper at Winston. He stretched a hand out to touch her shoulder but she pulled back.  
"The doctor is on the way," Winston said.  
"I don't need a doctor."  
"You do," said Winston gently. "And I shall need ... a report for when I file my complaint."  
"John," she said, turning to him.  
"I'll stay with you, if you like," he said. "But you need to see a doctor."  
She looked like she was going to cry again, but she nodded.  
Winston excused himself and left them alone.  
"I heard what Winston said," she whispered.  
"I'll take care of it," John promised.  
"When this has died down, when the time is right, you'll track him down and kill him?" she asked. "As a favour to me?"  
"I swear it."  
His face was gaunt in the shadows thrown by Winston's desk light, his short hair tousled. Anna touched his cheek, a flicker of her fingertips.  
"I'll owe you," she said.

... ... ...  
Anna was watching him, her head tipped to one side. She raised the glass to her lips and drank.  
"Want some?" she asked. "I passed a convenience store on the way and I just felt like getting really, really drunk."  
"You're upset – " John began.  
"I'm not upset," she snapped. "At least, not any more. Somewhere along the way back to the hotel I got really fucking angry and really fucking tired of being scared, of feeling like a fucking victim, you get me? It's been a long time and I'm sick of letting it be a part of who I am."  
"That's good," said John, but he wasn't entirely sure. She was sparking a kind of energy he hadn't seen since their early years together, since Michael Black had pulled her in off the streets: a kind of balled-up energy, an unpredictability that used to make him nervous back then and made him uneasy now.

Anna leaned forward, her tapping her fingernails on the glass.  
"I want you to go downstairs and get another room, John," she said.  
He looked at her. "Sorry?"  
"Get your stuff," she explained in a calm voice, "go downstairs to the reception and tell the nice lady at the desk that you've had a fight with your wife and you need another room for the night."  
"But _why_?" asked John.  
She stood up and walked up to him, standing on her tiptoes so her face was next to his cheek.  
"Because I'm feeling really fucking _destructive_ , John Wick. I want to hurt someone really bad and, failing that, I want to fuck someone's brains out. I can't hurt you, so I just might bang you if you stay here."  
"Anna – " he began.  
She raised a hand. "I'm not joking, Mr Wick. This is your get-out-of-jail-free card. Please take it if you wish. Turn around, walk out the door and get yourself a room for the night. No hard feelings. No feelings either way, if you like. The choice is yours."  
She continued to stand on her toes, so she could look him in the eye. Her hair was messed up and her make-up smudged. Halfway through her bottle of wine, she nonetheless looked at him evenly, coolly. Assessing him.  
"Anna – " he started again, but she lay a hand on his face for a second to silence him, then returned it to her side so they were standing opposite one another, not touching.  
"Get a room or get undressed," she said. "The choice is yours. I'll let you to decide."  
And she turned her back on him, walked over to the window with her glass in hand and looked out over the city.

John hesitated.  
Then he made his decision

 _And that decision was...?  
What do you think, readers? Where does the next chapter go?_


	19. Chapter 19

_Not a fan of smut? Skip this chapter, then. Otherwise: brace yourself. And don't read it at work._

"Aw, shit," Anna thought:  
There was a quiet click as the door shut behind him and she was left alone in the room. She drained her glass and put down on the table, then went to the door to lock it. As she did so, she peered through the peephole and saw John outside the door, head down. Thinking. She held her breath, watching him, but he did not move. He'd always had an extraordinary stillness, the propensity to remain quiet, unmoving, while he silently thought things through. She watched him for a moment or two, his head bowed, dark hair covering the expression on his face, then she could stand it now longer. She yanked the door open.  
"John?" she said.  
He looked up; Anna shrank back at the expression on his face. She'd seen him angry on many occasions, but it had never been directed at her. Not before this, in any case.

He pushed into the room and shoved the door shut as soon as she crossed the threshold, almost knocking her over.  
" _I am not your toy_ ," he hissed, leaning his face down into hers. His eyes were just inches from his and she was struck again by dark his eyes were when he was angry or upset. She flinched beneath him, tried to shrink away, but he moved with her, keeping his face almost pressed up against hers.  
"You cannot commandeer me around like some kind of puppet," he continued, his voice hoarse with controlled temper. "You know why I won't fuck you? Because ten minutes from now, you could just change your mind and leave me dangling, like you always do. But my purpose in life is not to scratch your itch," he said sarcastically. "I'm sick of it, Anna. Fuck you."  
He pushed her away.  
" _You_ go downstairs and tell the nice lady at the reception that _you_ need another room. Tell her your husband kicked you out for being a bitch. Because I'm staying here; I'm covered in blood and plaster and I need a fucking shower."

He whipped off his jacket and flung it on the bed. Without even looking at her, he stormed past into the bathroom and slammed the door.  
Anna leaned against the wall, astonished and suddenly stone-cold sober. She drew a deep breath, realising she'd been holding hers while face to face with John's fury. She heard the sound of the chair on the tiles as he tossed his clothes aside, the clink of something metal hitting the floor – probably the buckle on his belt or gun strap, then the sound of water running. She put her hand on the door handle and waited.  
Then slipped inside.

He was standing with his back to her, the water pouring over his hair, down his back. Anna sat on the counter beside the sink. And said nothing. She watched him soap himself, looked at the muscles in his back rippling the tattoos. He wasn't wearing his wedding ring, she noticed. She looked around and saw it in front of the ledge of the mirror. Anna had to stop herself picking it up, turning it over in her hand. She looked down at the floor tiles, swinging her legs gently.  
"You're still here?" John asked curtly.  
"I guess," she replied.  
He turned to face her. She'd seen him naked dozens of times, but always as he was scurrying to put on clothes or turning away from her. Now he stood in the shower, staring at her with an odd look on his face. A challenging look, almost truculent. As she watched, he raised his arms to slick his dark hair back under the stream of water, not taking his eyes off her. The water streamed down his chest, over the scar on his shoulder that had been her gift to him, down the indent between his ribs and over the long scar on his stomach. And down further.  
She looked away, embarrassed.

"What do you want?" he said. He picked up the shower gel and squeezed some into his hands, rubbing them together before he soaped his shoulders and chest, wincing as he touched bruises and fresh scars.  
She searched for the words.  
"I didn't want you to just scratch an itch," she said. Her voice barely came out above a whisper and he frowned, trying to hear her over the sound of the shower. "You know that, John."  
She ducked her head.  
He said nothing and she didn't need to look up to know he was standing under the streaming water, washing himself and looking at her with his habitually quizzical look, trying to figure out what she was thinking. She kept her head down until she could stand it no longer, then looked up.

John pushed open the door of the shower.  
"Come," he said and extended a hand.  
Anna's eyebrows shot upwards.  
"Come on," he repeated.  
She started, frowning.  
"In there? With you?"  
He nodded, then raised a finger: "But on one condition: you don't come in here unless you intend to finish what you start. You can walk out of here right now, this is you – what did you call it? – your get-out-of-jail-free card."  
He smiled at her, a mirthless smile, and turned his back on her again, moving his head in under the full stream of the shower.

Anna undressed silently, dropping her clothes gently to the floor as though the cotton might make noise when it hit the tiles. Then she slid in beside him, timidly touching his wet arm. He looked up at the falling water and then turned to her. With one small step, he wrapped her in his arms and kissed her roughly. Anna wrapped her arms around his neck, arching her body against the wetness of his torso. She felt him harden immediately and she gasped, moving her hips to feel his length against the skin of her stomach. He pulled her gently out of the jet of water and turned her so he could nuzzle her neck and run a hand across her breasts, lightly massaging them. Then he slipped his other hand between her legs, his fingers searching and stroking.  
"Fuck, John!"  
She was struggling for breath. Being this close to him was shutting down her ability to inhale and exhale, all she could think about were his fingers, his lips moving lightly against the delicate skin below her ear.

He straightened up and shoved the shower door open.  
"Come on," he said again, pulling her out by the hand.  
"The water – " she yelped and turned the shower handle before following him. He grabbed two towels and gave her one, not even looking back, and tugged her into the bedroom. Anna wrapped it hastily around her torso but when they reached the bed he pulled it off and tossed it with his own on the floor. They stared at each other for a few seconds.  
"You are beautiful," she said. "Scarred – " she ran a fingertip down his stomach, "and broken – " she touched the welt on his shoulder that she'd caused with her knife, "but you are beautiful, Mr Wick."  
He grinned.  
"And the same back to you, Miss Quinn," he said and leaned in to kiss her. Their lips met and they kissed gently, hesitantly, shy now that the first wave of passion had waned. Anna pushed him gently back on to the bed.  
"I think I owe you something."  
"An apology?" he asked.  
"Another one?" she teased. "Maybe I can give you something else to show how sorry I am."  
She planted a light kiss below his navel and moved down, taking him in her mouth. Just as he had done in that hotel room many years ago, he lifted his hips a fraction of an inch and moaned.  
"God, Anna!"  
She moved over him slowly, then faster and firmer, her fingers stroking his stomach and chest, his fingers entwined in her hair as though he were afraid she would pull away. She felt him swell and flicked her tongue against his tip -  
\- and gently but firmly he pushed her off.  
"No, not like that," he whispered and pulled her on to the bed beside him. He kissed her urgently then used a knee to part her legs. He hid his face in her hair and thrust in.

Stars exploded in front of her eyes. She moved beneath him to take him as deeply as she could and he pushed in further. He moved rhythmically, once, twice, and she gripped him, lightly scraping his back with her nails, rubbing her face against the roughness of his beard. He moved faster, firmer, and his breathing became ragged.  
"John," she said hoarsely.  
He was still, pulled his face back so he could look at her. "Are you sure?" His voice was husky, his pupils so dilated that his eyes looked almost black.  
Anna stroked her thumb across his cheekbones, down the length of his nose, and he closed his eyes for a second under her touch.  
"Yes," she said and moved her hips against him.  
He groaned and thrust hard. She held him as he moved against her, his eyes shut, mouth pressed against her cheek. She felt him come inside her and, though she was not sure, she thought he said her name.

When he fell asleep, she untangled their arms and legs and covered him with a bedsheet. He complained briefly, without even opening his eyes, then surrendered to sleep, one arm flung across her pillow as though he were trying to reach for her, the other across his forehead. Relaxed, he always looked younger – his hair off his face, the frown lines eased. She sat cross-legged in the bed and looked at him. He was already breathing deeply; he turned his face from her as he slept.

Anna lay down beside him, taking his hand to move it off her pillow. Instinctively, he clutched her fingers and she squeezed them back, touching his fingers, the skin on the back of his hand. She turned it over to tenderly kiss the palm, then touched the small band of paler skin where his wedding band had been. When she looked up, he was watching her.  
"No regrets?" she said.  
He hesitated, thinking. "No," he said slowly. He shook his head. "No."  
They lay face to face. Anna stroked his beard and he rubbed his face against her hand, like a cat.  
"And you?" he asked lightly. "No regrets?"  
She grinned. "No," she said. "It was okay."  
"Just okay?"  
She leaned in to kiss him, letting a hand drift downwards, following the line of hair below his navel. He groaned.  
"You more than scratched my itch," she whispered.

... ... ...

 _Thank you once again for your comments. I hope I've managed to scratch your Wickian itch as well :-D_


	20. Chapter 20

"I'm up," John said. "I'm up."  
He opened his eyes and saw Anna sitting beside him. "I'm _up_ ," he grinned and started to pull back the sheet. She tugged it back up around his chest.  
"You're going to be pretty down when I'm finished," she said grimly.  
"Can it wait?" he asked, undeterred.  
She ignored him. "I have good news and bad news," she said. "Which do you want first?"  
"Neither."  
"The bad news, then," she said. "Mr Charon called – "  
"Charon from The Continental?"  
"The one and only. He rang – "  
"He called you on the mobile? How did he get the number? I thought only Dieter had that number – "  
She put a hand over his mouth. "I never thought I'd have to say this, but: stop talking, John. Yes, he called – he called reception and was put through to the room. The phone rang beside your head and you didn't move a muscle."  
"But how did he get the number?" John asked, sitting upright in bed. He ran his hand through his hair and it stuck up in all directions. Anna looked away so she wouldn't be tempted to smooth it back down.  
"Some excellent detective work," she said.

She'd grabbed the phone after the first ring. It was seven o'clock on the dot; she'd already had breakfast and been out for a jog, watching her back carefully, choosing the hard pavements of busy streets instead of ducking into one of the nearby parks. She'd picked up the phone immediately, expecting the reception desk. Instead it was a familiar voice that she couldn't immediately place.  
"Mrs Black?" the voice said. "This is Mr Charon from the New York Continental."  
"Mr Charon!" she said, "how did you get this number?"  
His deep chuckle rolled down the phone line.  
"It was, if I may say so, a most inspired piece of detective work. I happened to remember arranging to have some dry cleaning picked up for you and it struck me as rather touching that you used the name Black as your pseudonym. A trivial detail, perhaps, but some months later I was asked by Mr Wick to book him a hotel anonymously in Los Angeles. He, too, chose to book in under the name Black. So when I set about locating you in London, I ran a search for a couple named by this most beloved name. It was not hard."  
She could hear the smile in his voice. She didn't need to know how he ran his search; Mr Charon could extend his feelers around the globe and always find someone willing to sift through booking data for the information he required.

"So why are you calling, Mr Charon?" she asked. "Are you at the front desk?"  
"Most certainly not," he said. "I am on my break."  
Anna found it hard to imagine Charon leaving his post for something as quotidian as lunch or, perish the thought, the restroom.  
"It has come to our ears that you caused extensive damage to a certain London home and had a close encounter with Mr Martin Aimes. Is this true?"  
"I see the grapevine is working fine and dandy," Anna grumbled.  
"Have you spoken to Mr Römermann yet?" Charon asked.  
"John spoke to him for a few minutes last night. Just to report what happened. Why?"  
"Well, it is with great regret that I must inform you that Mrs Römermann succumbed to her injuries a little while ago. Mrs Bridgemont has been informed and the rest of the High Table have been summoned to New York to deal with this matter."  
"Gordana Römermann is dead?" Anna said, incredulous.  
"It would appear that she was being cared for at home but unfortunately contracted an infection which ultimately weakened her."  
Charon lowered his voice. "Mr Römermann is not taking it very well."  
Anna swallowed. "The bullet was meant for me, Char. I tried to push her out of the way but probably just made it worse. There was a lot of blood."  
"Be that as it may," Charon said, "Mr Winston is of the opinion that this will lead to – what was the word that he used? – a showdown in New York. I thought it contingent upon me to warn you and Mr Wick of what you will be returning to. I fear, in the meantime, you have become pawns in a rather bigger game."  
"In a bigger mess," Anna said bitterly. "Eleven seats on the High Table and its two most powerful members are at each others' throats, with John and me in the middle."  
"What did Mr Römermann promise you?" Charon asked curiously. "Why take on a woman like Margaret Bridgemont?"  
"With her gone, he'll have a majority on the Table," she explained quickly. "He's promised to cancel our contracts."  
"Hmmm."  
"Did you just call to tell me about Gordana?" she asked.  
Mr Charon cleared his throat. "I thought it might interest you to know that Mrs Bridgemont has vacated her New York apartment and has chosen to take rooms somewhere where she feels less ... threatened."  
"At the Continental?" Anna asked. She took the resulting silence as a yes.  
"Does she realise," she continued, "that John has already killed once on Continental ground?"  
Charon said nothing for a second or two, then choosing his words carefully, he said, "I have been asked to remind you that a further violation of our rules will be met with little tolerance."  
Anna understood. "So basically Winston is saying that if one of us does it again, we will both be punished."  
"Yes."  
"As in...?"  
"It would be best to ask Mr Wick. Mr Winston extended a great professional courtesy to him, but others have not been as kindly treated. Miss Perkins, for example."  
"What happened to Perkins?"  
"It was necessary to make a point," Charon said. He let her digest that piece of information, then he said: "Miss Quinn, you must forgive me but my allotted break time is over and I must return to the desk. It has been a pleasure to speak to you. My best regards to Mr Wick."  
And without further ado, he hung up.

John rubbed his hair again and Anna couldn't stand it. She flattened it down, tucking it behind his ear.  
"What was the good news?" he asked.  
"They serve pancakes for breakfast here. Like, real pancakes. And there are three kinds of syrup."  
The good news didn't do much to cheer him up.  
"Gordana is dead and Bridgemont has sought asylum in The Continental," John summarised.  
He leaned back against the headboard and scratched his head thoughtfully.  
"How will we get her out?" he wondered.  
"Well, she can't stay in there forever," Anna pointed out. "And we can't go in after her. Charon has already told me that if we transgress once again in the Continental, we'll pay for it with our lives."  
John thought about it, picking at the bedclothes distractedly.  
Finally he said, "We'll do nothing."  
"Nothing?"  
"We can't get back into the US on the Black passports – if Charon can find us, you can bet it's only a matter of time before one of Bridgemont's informers tracks us down here. We're on her home turf, after all. It's going to take a few days to get new biometric ones good enough to get us through border patrol. In the meantime, Dieter will be arranging his wife's funeral and the other members of the High Table will be on their way to New York. So we let them convene and see what they decide. Maybe they'll do the job for us."  
"But we – "  
"We can't get into the Continental and she won't come out. What more can we do?"

Anna opened her mouth to argue, but the mobile in her lap started to ring and she picked it up, peering at the number.  
"It's Dieter," she said, handing him the phone. John pushed it back at her.  
"You take it," he said. "Talk to him in German."  
As soon as Anna pressed the 'accept' button on the phone, they could both hear Römermann shouting down the phone. She held it away from her ear.  
" _Bringt sie um!_ " he roared. " _Holt sie aus dem Scheiß-Hotel raus und bringt sie um!_ "  
"Get her out of that fucking hotel and kill her," Anna whispered, then said into the receiver, " _Wir tun unser Bestes, Dieter._ " We'll do our best.  
"Your fucking best is not good enough," he said. "I don't want you to do your fucking best. I want you to fucking _do_ it, do you hear me? Go in and get her if you must, but you kill her, do you hear?"  
"We thought we might wait until the High Table meets," Anna said carefully, "Perhaps the others will agree with you and have her removed."  
" _Bist du taub?_ " Dieter snarled. Are you deaf? " _Entweder ihr holt die verdammte Schlampe da raus oder ihr geht da rein, aber ihr bringt sie um. Verstanden? Der High Table trifft sich in einer Woche und wenn sie bis dahin nicht tot ist, seid ihr dran._ "  
He hung up with such fury and such haste that Anna dropped the phone on the bed as though it were on fire.

John was staring at her. She cleared her throat.  
"Well," she said. "Good and all though your plan may have been, Dieter has ... eh... an alternative suggestion. He says we either get her out or go in and get her. Either way, he wants her dead before the High Table convenes in a week, or he'll have us killed instead."  
John sighed, shaking his head.  
"He has all of our personal information," Anna said. "He arranged our passports, he booked this hotel. He has access our biometric data; he's paying our credit cards. If anyone can find us, he can. I say we do what he says."  
"He walked us into a trap in Bridgemont's house," John argued. "He doesn't care about us, we're expendable. His only concern right now is killing the woman who's responsible for killing his wife and he doesn't care who dies to do so."  
"We have no choice," Anna insisted. "One way or another, we're walking dead: we each have a contract on our head and our only chance of getting that cancelled is to do this. At least we can move relatively freely in New York – as long as the Bowery King holds up his end of the bargain."  
John shook his head again, clearly displeased.  
"We'll fly into Canada," he said after a couple of minutes. "Montreal. I'll use my Canadian passport, you can use your German one. We'll drive across the border and down to New York. We'll try to come up with a plan along the way."  
She nodded and leaned over to pick up her laptop from the bedside table.  
"I'll look into flights," she said.

John threw back the sheets and got out of bed. Anna glanced up and then looked down, hiding her head behind the screen of the laptop.  
"I thought you were okay with nudity," John observed wryly from the end of the bed.  
"Go take a shower," she said.  
"Want to save water and take one with me?"  
"Shut up, John, I'm busy."  
"It's good for the environment, I've heard."  
"I can't look for flights if you're distracting me."  
She tapped away on the keyboard, her head still down. When she looked up, he was still standing there, his head inclined to one side, watching her silently.  
"You're making me nervous," she said.  
"A shower would help you relax."  
Anna closed the lid of the laptop and laid it aside. "You are relentless, you know that?"  
"I've been told it's one of my better qualities," he said quietly and smiled his sudden smile. He held out his hand and she took it.


	21. Chapter 21

In the end, they flew to Canada separately. With his Canadian passport open, Anna trimmed his beard and hair so he looked a little bit more like the photo. Then he packed his travel bag, donned one of the new suits paid for on Dieter Römermann's tab and left her at the hotel room door with a lingering kiss.  
"Be careful," he said.  
"Always," she answered.  
"I'll pick you up at the airport in Montreal tomorrow, okay? I'll think about this, I'll come up with something."  
Anna nodded and raised a hand to cup his cheek.  
"Don't think too much," she said. "We'll find a way, we always do."  
He dipped his head down and rested his forehead against hers for a moment, then straightened up and left.

Anna knew her German passport was good and her backstory was solid, but it didn't stop her feeling nervous as she passed through immigration. She tried to look impatient, but not nervous; just bored enough to look mildly irritated, but not irritated enough to look suspicious. She answered officials' questions politely, all the time aware that she didn't know whether her name or face or passport number had been placed on some warning list or would signal some alert. But nothing happened. She was checked and waved through, collected her small suitcase and made her way out of the terminal to the carpark.

John was waiting by his car, leaning against the driver's door, watching the cars going in and out of the carpark. It was bitterly cold, he was wearing a thick black scarf around his neck, his old leather jacket was pulled tight around him. Anna moved faster when she saw him, wanting to get into the warm car and be near him again. When he spotted her, he stood up and a look of pleasure crossed his face before he seemed to shake himself and settle his features into a more neutral expression. By the time she was standing in front of him, he had a guarded smile on his face and Anna knew something was wrong.  
"What's up?" she said by way of greeting.  
"Nothing. Get in, it's cold."  
He took her bag and stowed it in the trunk of the car. Anna slipped inside and fiddled with the heaters.  
"Did you have a nice flight?" he asked politely and then, "We're heading straight for New York. If we leave now, we'll be there by nightfall. There won't be much border traffic on a Tuesday evening. That okay by you?"  
"Sure," she answered distractedly. "Are you okay, John?"  
She wriggled around in her seat so she was facing him, then reached a hand out to touch his leg.  
"Yes, fine," he said and moved his leg, pressing the gas pedal. Anna pulled her hand back as though she'd been stung.

"I told you not to think," she said icily. "That included not thinking about what happened between you and me and what this thing between us is and what's going to happen between us. And what did you do? Spent the night brooding about it like a damn pre-teen. For fuck's sake, John."  
He said nothing.  
"I know you, man. I bet you were awake half the night, fretting. What's going on between us? What does this mean? What would Helen say?"  
"Leave Helen out of it," he muttered.  
"How can I leave her out?" Anna snapped. "What do you think Helen would say? Did you come to any conclusions in your long, sleepless night?"  
He didn't answer, he just signalled to overtake a car in front of him, his eyes fixed on the road. Anna stared at him, his straight nose, dark hair falling into his dark eyes, and he tried to ignore her. But the very pale pink that tinged his cheeks was the telltale sign that she was bothering him. She looked away, out her window, too annoyed to make him squirm.

"You never told me you met her," he said finally and Anna whipped her head around.  
"What?"  
"Before she died, Helen said she met you. Like, a long time ago. Before we were married."  
This time, Anna felt her cheeks redden.  
"Yeah. So? What did she say?"  
"She just told me that she met you and you talked. She said you were nice."  
Anna snorted. "Yeah, right."  
"So what _did_ happen?"  
"It's a long time ago, it doesn't matter any more."  
"It matters to me," he said quietly.  
"Fine, okay. So, one night I was coming back from a job – this was before I hooked up properly with Pfeiffer, I was doing some smaller jobs for the Agency till they could reassign me. I get back to the Continental and Charon just gives me a look – you know that look? – and says, 'Madam, there is a lady here to see you about Mr Wick.'  
Yeah, so I look around and there she is, sitting at one of the little tables looking absolutely terrified. Bear in mind that I've just come in from a job, so I'm covered in blood and God-knows-what-else, but Char gives me the once over and a nod, so I know I'm not dripping brains or whatever. I went over and sat down opposite her."

Anna stopped and closed her eyes for a second. Helen had been wearing a pair of cream pants and a darker cream shirt, rolled up to her elbows to reveal her neatly manicured hands and the tasteful gold watch that hung loosely around her wrist, moving up and down her arm like a bangle. In the dark foyer of The Continental, where people hung about in dark corners and darker clothes, she looked as bright and unsullied as an angel. Her face, when she saw Anna, was curious and apologetic. As Anna pretended to fix the cushion on the chair before she sat down, she was aware that the other woman was taking her all in: the long, tightly-fitting black coat with the double-breasted buttoned-front, the high black boots and the skin-tight black jeans beneath them. With her hair chopped short and dyed a dark plum, Anna was aware that she looked like the antithesis of the other woman, who was smiling at her reassuringly, the way you might carefully approach a vicious dog.

"Are you Anna Quinn?" she asked.  
"Depends on who's asking," Anna answered.  
The woman laughed apologetically and introduced herself – her name was Helen. She was a friend of John's, John Wick. A good friend. Well, more than a friend. They were engaged.  
And she held out her hand to show Anna the ring, a band of gold with a cluster of smaller diamonds around a big one. Rumours were true: John was doing well.  
"How can I help you?" Anna asked, not bothering to examine it.  
"I ... I'm looking for some information," she said. "About John."  
She raised her chin up, a touch defiantly.  
"Has he gone missing or something?" Anna said, playing dumb.  
"No, it's just that ... well, can I be honest with you?"  
"Knock yourself out."  
"He doesn't tell me much about himself. I mean, he tells me about himself but he won't tell me what he does for a living, except to say he works in security. He seems to make a lot of money for a guy who works in security."  
She laughed, a fake laugh that rang tinny in the muted silence of the foyer.  
Anna looked at her, assessing her.  
"How did you get my name? Why are you asking _me_ about him?" she asked.

Helen bit her upper lip, leaving a trace of her carefully-applied lipstick on her teeth.  
"He had the flu a couple of weeks ago and he was taking some really strong medication. I guess it made him a bit loopy because he woke in the middle of the night and he called me Quinn. He kept saying, 'Is someone there, Quinn?'"  
Anna felt a trickle of icy cold run down her back.  
"I found your number on his phone. Actually, your number was disconnected but he'd saved the number of this place under your name as well. So I just came here and that nice gentleman told me to wait."  
She glanced up at Mr Charon and smiled. He smiled his courteous smile in return; Anna glared at him through slitted eyes and he looked away, suddenly busy with his computer.  
"I kind of figured you might be a woman if he expected to find you in his bed, but I was really hoping you wouldn't be."  
Again, the apologetic laugh.  
"I guess I was just hoping you might be able to tell me about the business he is – you are – involved in."  
She bit her lip once more. "I know it sounds crazy, I know you must think I'm one of those crazy stalkery women – but before I marry him, you know..."

Anna looked at her. She had a nice smile – a kind smile. She looked like the kind of woman who laughed at his jokes, stared at him adoringly, did stuff with him that bored Anna to tears – go to the opera or to the theatre to watch dour Scandinavian plays, trail around churches and cathedrals wondering if arches were Gothic or Romanesque. She probably made him happy, with her kind smile and sweet disposition, no biting remarks or sarcasm. No teasing or good-natured taunting. Anna suddenly felt happy for him – she felt relieved, if truth be told. She looked at the anxious woman in front of her and smiled brightly, sitting up carefully so her coat wouldn't open and reveal the blood splatters beneath.  
"No, I understand perfectly," she said. "To an outsider, it probably seems very cloak and dagger-ish, yeah?"  
Helen nodded.  
"I presume he told you that we do high-end security detail, am I right?"  
It was the standard tale trotted out to any curious family members or friends.  
"Well," Anna said in the same bright tone, "that's basically it. He and I were often paired up to work together and we covered some people from the upper echelons of society. Politicians. Business people." She lowered her voice. "Celebrities."  
Helen's eyes widened.  
"We'd have to stand in as decoys when things get a bit hairy or if they receive some kind of threat. There are some serious nutjobs out there, you know. And, obviously, in our business, people pay top dollar for absolute secrecy. We're not supposed to talk about it to anyone, not even our partners or spouses."  
She smiled sympathetically at Helen. "Suffice it to say, it's a lot less exciting than it sounds. A lot of waiting around, hoping something exciting will happen."  
Helen smoothed her pants, straightening the wrinkles with her hands.  
"That's a relief," she said. "I just thought – I was just afraid he was doing something – " she lowered her voice, "- illegal."  
"John? Do something illegal? He wouldn't even _park_ illegally," Anna cried.  
Helen laughed in agreement.  
"Well, he's planning on a career change in a year or two, so we can, you know, spend more time together. Maybe plan a family," she added shyly.  
Anna's stomach sank. John had obviously not told her that he would never have children; children made you vulnerable. Children were the chink in the armour of any professional, even a retired one. This woman would never be a mother, at least not with this man.

The other woman hesitated, then said, "And can I ask you one last thing?"  
"Sure," Anna replied, knowing the question before it was even asked.  
"Were you and him... I mean, were you two ever – "  
"Lovers?" she supplied. "Ugh, no. No offence but, um, _no_. So not my type."  
Helen laughed again, but this time it was a real laugh and it rang out across the lobby, causing other people to look up and look appreciatively at the woman in cream.

Helen apologised again for coming but Anna brushed the apology off, standing up to show the conversation was over.  
"Congratulations on your engagement," she said. "I'm sure you two will be very happy together."  
Helen's face shone. "He's very special," she said. "I'm lucky to have found him, he's such a sweet and gentle guy."  
To avoid comment, Anna smiled.  
"Give him my best regards," she said, but the future Mrs Wick looked at her purse, fiddling with the clasp, and Anna suddenly realised that this conversation would never be reported to their mutual acquaintance. Which was fine by her. She took her leave and watched Helen leave, her dark hair swinging, smiling politely at the people who looked up to watch her pass. She walked down the steps of the Continental and back to her life with John.

When she turned, Mr Charon was staring at her, his face implacable and unreadable. She glared at him again, but this time he held her gaze for a moment or two before turning slowly from her to look at his computer screen.  
\- - -

"So what did she want?" John asked gruffly.  
"She wanted me to confirm that you were, in fact, a bodyguard for Russian oligarchs," she said lightly. "She just wanted reassurance that you weren't doing anything illegal."  
"And that's what you told her?"  
"Of course."  
He drove on in silence, then said, "Thank you."  
Anna nodded.  
"She liked you," John said suddenly. "She didn't tell me about it till she was dying, but she said you were very beautiful. Like a doll, she said."  
It made Anna feel embarrassed. Over the years she'd heard that she was attractive, though mostly from people who wanted something from her. Or with her. The dead woman's assessment of her appearance was strangely touching.  
"And this is what you've been torturing yourself with?" Anna snapped. "Worrying about what Helen would think?"  
He sighed.  
"It's very soon," he said finally. "I'm not over her, Anna. It's too fresh. It was a mistake."

Anna turned her face from him and looked at the window.  
"Fine," she said.  
"I need time," he said in a conciliatory tone. "Just give me time."  
"Yeah." It came out a bitter monosyllable. "Take all the time you need. It's the one thing we have lots of."  
He glanced over at her.  
"Not," she added and switched on the car radio. "I'm sick of this conversation. Do you want me to drive? Otherwise, I'm going to sleep."  
"No, sleep," he answered. "I'll wake you at the border."  
She turned her back to him and place a hand under her cheek, closing her eyes.  
John glanced at her once or twice but he couldn't see her face. He turned back to the road ahead and drove on.


	22. Chapter 22

He pressed against her and she turned, so her body was against his. He pulled her towards him in the bed, so his chin could rest on the top of her head. He bent his head to bury his nose in her hair, then dipped down for a kiss. He wrapped his legs around hers and she moved her hips closer so they rubbed against him. She tucked a lock of hair behind his ear and moved slowly, a movement that echoed the rhythm of her breathing, an in-and-out that translated into a tantalising back-and-forth against his stomach and groin.  
"Helen," he breathed.  
"I'm not Helen," she answered, raising her face to him with a grin. "I'm the other one."  
"But I love Helen," he said.  
"Then where's your wedding ring?" she said and raised his hand. "Where's your wedding ring, John?"

He woke. He was hard, breathing fast. He rubbed the tip of his thumb against his finger, the flesh on his ring finger softer and smoother than on the others. Where was his wedding ring? He thought for a moment, trying to gather his wits, till he remembered putting it into the inside pocket of his laptop bag. He breathed more easily.  
He turned in the bed and sat up. Anna was sitting beside the window, silently buttering a slice of toast. She didn't acknowledge him, so he slid out of bed on the side furthest away from her, trying to hide his erection. At the bathroom door he paused to glance over at her. She was watching him over the brim of her coffee cup, her short hair still tousled after a restless night's sleep.  
"Poor John," she said, and looked down.  
It wasn't sarcasm, John realised, as he pushed the door open. She really meant it.

 _x x x_

From their position on the roof they could see into most of the rooms on the west side of The Continental. John scanned the building carefully, then handed the binoculars to Anna.  
"Through the roof?" she said.  
"No."  
"Through the basement, then?"  
"No."  
"Through the front door?"  
"No," he said patiently. "We can't go in after her. You spoke to Charon, you know Winston means business. If we kill her on Continental ground, he will summarily execute us."  
Anna handed him back the binoculars and he pulled absent-mindedly at his beard.  
"So what then? We lure her out? Entice her out? Smoke her out?"  
He continued to stare straight ahead. Anna moved impatiently from one foot to the other, watching him think.  
"We'll smoke her out," he said finally.

Back in their hotel room, they sat face to face at the table, going through the plan step by step. It was one that was subject to a lot of variables. John said it twice, rubbing his chin: "A lot of variables. A _lot_ of variables."

"And a lot of invariables," Anna countered, ever the optimist. "If we could find out whether Jeremy Jones is in town, we'd know he was in room 414, on the same floor as Bridgemont. You know she's going to be in the Kennedy Suite - she'll want the best and that's the best Winston has to offer. If we could find out whether the maids' day shift still ends at 4, we'd be golden. This is all good stuff, John. We've managed a lot more with a lot less – and we know who can help us fill the blanks."  
He nodded. "You're right," he admitted. "Can you get everything you need today?"  
"I think so," she said. "Will you let the Bowery King know we're in town?"  
"Do you think that's a good idea?"  
"He probably should know," she replied. "It's his territory and he's our future employer."  
John nodded again. "I'll take care of it," he said.  
"And Aurelio?"  
"Let's pay him a visit," John said.

 _x x x_

"Hey, fuckface!"  
Aurelio stopped in his tracks, then stepped inside his apartment. Hagrid pushed past him and ran inside.  
"Hey, bitch," he replied resignedly as Anna stepped out of the twilight gloom. Her hair was short now and she'd dyed it a dark colour; it made her face look paler. With her dark lipstick, she looked like some kind of a vampire, appearing in his tiny hall with a gun cocked cheekily in his direction.  
"Teaching you how to pick a lock was the worst fucking decision I ever made," he grumbled and pushed the barrel of the gun aside so he could pass her. "Is John here?" he asked, even as he saw the answer. Hagrid was scampering in ecstatic circles around his former master, skinny tail wagging energetically.  
"And you, Hagrid, are a fucking turncoat. Is this what I get for looking after you?" Aurelio scolded.  
"You called him Haggard?" John asked, rubbing the dog's coat.  
"Hagrid. You know," he said to their blank faces, "the gentle giant in Harry Potter? You're not gonna tell me you guys don't know Harry fucking Potter?"  
Anna and John shook their heads and Aurelio rolled his eyes in disgust.  
"Fucking philistines, man. You're fucking killing me," he said. He walked over to the fridge in his little kitchenette and took out a beer. He held it out to John, then Anna, but they both declined. "You guys are literally – " he sounded out each syllable: _lit – er – ally_ – "gonna kill me. Do you know how many people are looking for you? Do you have any idea how much you're worth?"  
They both nodded in unison.  
"So why are you here?" he said. "What do you want? You not afraid I'm gonna pick up the phone and call in for my reward?"  
Anna silently raised her gun again, aiming for his chest.  
"Put that down, Quinn. You know I won't call nobody but, still, one of you owes me an explanation. Seeing as John's not good with the words at the best of times, it might as well be you."

John walked over to the bar that separated the kitchenette from the rest of Aurelio's living space and sat on one of the bar stools. Dog – or Hagrid as he'd been renamed – sat down at his feet, his face resting happily on his paws.  
"We need some information from you, Auri, then we'll be gone."  
"What kind of information?"  
"About The Continental."  
"Oho, oh no. Oh fucking no," Aurelio laughed and took a swig from his bottle. "You gotta be kidding me. If you think you're using my sister as a way in, you can fucking forget it. She's got two kids now," he said, turning to John. "You're not going to fuck up her life, geddit?"  
"No, not that," Anna said quickly. "I just want to know whether Rosalia still works there."  
Aurelio narrowed his eyes.  
"Now, why do you wanna know that?" he asked suspiciously.  
"Just yes or no, Auri."  
He drank deep from his bottle, then placed the bottle on the bar beside John. "Yes."  
"And they still work the same shift system?"  
He covered his ears with his hands. "La-la-la," he sang tonelessly. "Jesus, you guys, this sounds like shit I don't wanna know."  
"Yes or no, Aurelio?"  
"Yes," he said reluctantly.  
"And can you phone your sister and ask her if Jeremy Jones is in residence? Tell her you need to contact him about money he owes you or something."  
"That's going too far," Aurelio protested.  
"Please," she wheedled. "It's a perfectly legitimate question. The dude owes everyone money. Come on, Auri."  
With a show of great reluctance, he picked up his phone and pressed a couple of buttons. He held it to his ear, glaring at Anna.  
"Yeah, it's me," he said. "Yeah, yeah. Tell me somethin': that shithead Jeremy Jones stayin' at The Continental right now? He needs to pay a bill from last year. Yeah. The Camino, yeah. Yeah, he still owes me. Okay. I'll call the desk tomorrow. Thanks, sis."  
He looked at Anna and demonstratively tossed the phone on the coffee table.  
"You happy?" he snapped.  
"Delirious," Anna said.

"Ma-an," he moaned unhappily. "The shit's gonna go down with that Bridgemont bitch, isn't it? I do not wanna be involved in that mess. Did you know that she took out the entire Patel family over there in Manchester – remember Dom Patel? Yeah? Well,every last one of them, she had them start with the kids. With the _kids_ ," he said, turning to John. "Where's the honour in that?"  
"No children and no civilians," John murmured. "That's the code."  
"Yeah, well, she don't give no fucks about no code. She's ruthless. You hear about the time she fed a man his cock? She's – "  
"It's okay, Aurelio," Anna said softly. "Not your circus, not your monkeys."  
He sank down on the couch and fished a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.  
"So are you fucks staying with me tonight?" he said. "If so, I'm gonna order a pizza and some more beer, awright?"

John and Aurelio sat on the roof of his apartment block on two old deck chairs that had seen better days. The night was cold and clear and Hagrid/Dog sat between them, trying to prove that although a dog cannot serve two masters, he not averse to being rubbed down by both. John ran a beer bottle back and forth between the palms of his chilled hands, Aurelio was smoking the last cigarettes from the pack he'd opened when he came home. Anna was already in a makeshift bed on his sofa; Aurelio had gallantly offered her his bed but she'd pointed out that she was the only one small enough to sleep on his sofa. They'd spent the past couple of hours talking about cars, discussing Aurelio's ongoing renovation of his Mustang. It was one of the few subjects that John Wick was willing to open up on: on the subject of his car, he became positively loquacious.

But that wasn't the only topic Aurelio was interested in.  
"So, what's the deal?" he said. "How did you guys hitch up again? Thought she was out of the game."  
"And I thought I was retired," John said wryly.  
Aurelio snorted. "You're like the fucking Rolling Stones," he said. "You keep coming out of retirement to fuck shit up."  
John grinned and drank his beer. "The Rolling Stones? _Really_?" he said.  
Aurelio ignored him. "Are you two ... you know?"  
He winked at John, who looked down the neck of his beer bottle and drank again.  
"No fucking way!" Aurelio cried. John hushed him.  
"You finally hit that?" he said in a theatrical whisper. "Good for you, my friend. Only took you twenty-something years, but you did it."  
Aurelio saluted him with his bottle and John reluctantly clinked his in a toast.

"You're good together," he said, leaning back into his chair. "I woulda hit that way back when, but she told me I was too like the guys she grew up with. Funny thing is, I was at a convention a few years back and I think I met her brother and she's right. I am a lot like the shits she grew up with."  
"Her brother?" John said, interested. "How do you know it was her brother?"  
"Only because he was the spitting fucking image of her, man. It was an automotive trade fair upstate, I was looking for a new supplier for some parts. I was wandering around, just minding my own business and I stopped at this stand where they were demonstrating a new kind of polish – man, John, you should see what this stuff does! One coat and – "  
"And you met her brother?" John interrupted.  
"Yeah. The guy beside me says something about how good it looked and I turned around and there was a little guy, image of Anna Quinn. So I says somethin' and he says somethin' and I swear to God, he even has her mannerisms – except this one has a Boston accent you could cut with a damn knife. So I'm, like, 'Hey, do you have a sister? You remind me of someone I know back home.' Then his face went all funny and I knew I'd hit a nerve. He just said, 'My sister died' and turned back to the demonstration. Finnerty, I think his name tag said."  
"That's right," John said slowly. "Her name was Finnerty."  
"Why'd she take Quinn?" Aurelio wondered.  
"That was her other brother's name. He overdosed when she was small. I think they were close. She didn't come from what you would call a stable family background, you know. The oldest brother was fostered by an aunt when she was little and she never really knew him. He cut off all contact with his family."

Once, on a job in Boston, Anna had made him drive to her brother's workshop. It looked prosperous, thriving; the sign was new and the forecourt well kept. She sat in the car till a small man came out, talking energetically to another man. They shook hands and the other man got into a car and drove off. Her brother stood in the summer sunshine for a moment or two, turning his face upwards to drink in the heat, before turning around and going back inside.  
"Do you want to go in and talk to him?" John asked Anna, who was sitting silently at his side, still as a statue.  
"No," she said finally. "I have nothing to say to him. He didn't even come to Quinn's funeral."  
John started the car, not hearing something she said over the noise of the engine.  
"Sorry?" he asked.  
"The only thing I want to ask him is why he left me behind," she said bitterly. "They all left me behind."  
She shook her head angrily and said, "Drive, Johnny. Talking is overrated. It doesn't change anything. He's not my brother any more anyway."

"So what's going to happen when all of this is over?" Aurelio wanted to know. "You two a thing now? You know, an item? You gonna join forces and become some kinda superhero assassination duo?"  
"We're not a thing," John said stiffly.  
Aurelio lit another cigarette and sucked on it viciously.  
"You gone and fucked it up already, John?" he said.  
"Why do you assume it was me?"  
"It was you, wasn't it?"  
"It's complicated."  
Aurelio choked on his beer. "Don't give me that teeny shit, John. _It's complicated_ ," he mocked in a falsetto. "You wanna put that as your Facebook status next?"  
John said nothing.  
"Well, I don't know what you did to make her throw her hat back in the ring for you, man, but if she did it of her own accord, you got something there you need to keep. Not many women would take on the High Table for a morose, skinny fuck like you."  
He held up his bottle for another clink. "Am I right?" Aurelio demanded, as John tapped his bottle against his.  
"You're right," John said and shivered.  
"Someone walk over your grave?" Aurelio asked.  
"Nah, it's cold," he answered, standing up. "Let's go back downstairs."  
"You take the bed," Aurelio insisted. "I'll take the floor in the living room."  
"I'll take the floor. Anna will be up at the crack of dawn and she'll probably walk on your face. On purpose."  
"I love that woman," Aurelio said, holding the fire escape door for John. "Crazy little bitch. Just my type."

 _\- o - o - o -_

 _Sorry about the long delay in updating. A couple more chapters will appear in the next few days, so check for updates. As always, your comments are very much appreciated. If you've read this far, thank you for reading along._


	23. Chapter 23

Anna stifled a yawn and twirled around on Aurelio's office chair. His desk was piled high with papers and catalogues; she'd flicked through a couple of them but quickly realised that she was never going to find much of interest among the descriptions of exhaust pipes and catalytic converters.  
"You tired?" Aurelio asked. He was typing something at his computer using four fingers. Anna itched to push him out of the way and type it for him. "You shouldn't get up so early. Sleep in, baby."  
"I got my eight hours," she said and twirled again. "Just bored out of my skull. How long does he need?"  
She stopped the chair facing the cracked window that separated Aurelio's office from the rest of the workshop. John was deep in conversation with an older mechanic called Howard ("Never How, never Howie, just Howard"), who'd been entrusted the task of repairing his car. They were the only people in the place: Aurelio's staff didn't come in before nine but Howard, who'd been just about old enough to earn his driving licence when John's Mustang was brand new, liked to start work before the younger crowd got in.  
"They're too darn noisy, Mr Black," he'd said to John and he got a comprehending nod in reply. Howard didn't know who John was; his only interest in the tall man in front of him was as the owner of the car.

"Ah," Anna sighed, "John Wick sandwiched between his two great loves: his ancient car and his mangy dog. He must be in heaven right now."  
"He got other great loves," Aurelio said, looking at her. "Don't he?"  
She ignored the jibe and continued to twirl.  
"So I hear you two hooked up," he said, when it became apparent that his more subtle approach was not working.  
"Did John tell you that?" she asked, surprised.  
"In a manner of speaking. I asked him and he hummed and hawed and I took it as a yes."  
"Yeah, well. A once off."  
"Aw, come on, Annie. Throw the guy a bone."  
"He threw me a bone. I caught it. Then he decided to keep all the rest of his bones for the memory of his sainted wife."  
Aurelio snorted with laughter. "You two," he said, shaking his head. "I never met such smart people that were so fucking dumb."  
She shrugged and twirled again.  
"But whatcha doin' for him now is a nice thing," Aurelio said. "I know he appreciates it. You're a good friend, Annie."  
"He's been a good friend to me."

Aurelio tapped at his keyboard, then stopped abruptly.  
"You ever gonna tell me who got Tommy Aimes?" he asked. "I know, I know – " he interrupted as Anna started to protest. "Neither of you were even in Jersey that night. John was in Canada, right? And you were – "  
"I was in The Continental with Mark Pfeiffer," she said, watching him carefully. "We had drinks in the bar. A lot of people saw us. We were drunk, we went to bed and made love. So why're you asking me about Tommy Aimes?"  
Aurelio pushed his keyboard away and rested his folded arms on scratched desk so he could study her carefully.  
"Everyone knows that one of you did it. No one knows which one of you it was and how you did it. Did you hire someone else? Did Pfeiffer do it for you? You wanna tell me?"  
"Why do you wanna know?" Anna asked.  
"'Cause tonight you're going in after Margaret Bridgemont," Aurelio said. "And I gotta know, it's killing me, Anna."  
The words he didn't say hung in the air: they were going after Margaret Bridgemont. They mightn't return. Chances are, they wouldn't.

"What's the harm?" Anna shrugged. "So what do you know?"  
"He was killed in his own garage. Doors locked, like no one could get in or out. That's what makes me think it was you, 'cause that's the kind of shit you pull. But it was a headshot, which is John. I think you'da fucked him up real good beforehand. And there was a note taped to the garage door for his wife, warning her not to keep the kids away – a printed note, like typed out on a computer. So it was someone who'd taken the time to plan it, knew that Mrs Aimes and the kids would be away that weekend. So how did you do it?"  
Anna twirled once again, this time with enough force to complete a 360° turn, ending up facing Aurelio again.  
"John killed him," she said. "But I was there. I got us in. I watched the place on and off for months. His house is rigged up like Fort Knox, but I got in through a little window over the garage. I had to lose seven, eight pounds to get in there, but once I knew I could go through with it, I stopped eating to get myself skinny enough to get through."  
Even at that, it hadn't been easy. She'd had to wriggle through the window like a contortionist, grazing her skin as she scraped herself through, then wiping the window frame down to erase any trace of her entry.

"And then I crept downstairs and deactivated the alarm long enough to let John in. We got that pig out of bed and took him downstairs to his garage."  
Aimes hadn't shown fear, hadn't shown repentance. Instead, he'd shouted at them, spat at Anna, told John in graphic detail what he'd done to his companion. That dull, angry red colour had spread across his cheekbones and he'd tried to whack Aimes across the mouth, but Anna held his arm and pulled him away. They taped their captive to a chair and Anna smacked a strip of tape across his mouth.  
"What now?" John had said.  
He hadn't asked her anything before they set off: although they usually went through any plans in minute detail before they even left their hotel room, they hadn't been working together for well over a year. In fact, the first contact she'd made with him was to tell him where to be and when. She'd been curt on the phone, starting the conversation not with a salutation but with, "Remember the favour you said you'd do me, John?"  
His heart had jumped, his stomach turned, remembering the night in Winston's office.  
"Yes," he'd replied. "What do you need?"

Under the bright fluorescent light of the garage, Anna had started moving around. She turned up the air conditioning and John had shivered as he felt the chill. She had that wild-eyed look to her again, her gun dangling casually in her hand as though she were holding a toy or a child's rattle. She tugged at the gloves over her hands in a businesslike fashion, then pulled up a chair to sit facing Tommy Aimes.  
"Hello, Thomas," she said. "I've spent a long time thinking about this night. Almost as much time as I've spent thinking about our last night together."  
She gave a short laugh, a shrill laugh that bounced off the garage walls.  
"I gave a lot of thought to all the things that I would do to you – and I got really creative, you know. You know how much stuff you can shove up a human orifice?"  
The man tied to the chair winced involuntarily.  
"Anna," John said softly.  
She ignored him.  
"But then," she said, "then I remembered something: you've got a family. You went ahead and had two adorable little kiddiewinks. And they are adorable – I don't know whose genes they've got, because you're an ugly bastard. Maybe your wife played around? Wouldn't blame her, considering the kind of shit her husband was up to with other women."  
Tommy growled through his tape.  
"Yeah, well, as far as you're concerned, they're your little darlings, aren't they? Darling Melissa and beautiful little Amy, with her big blue eyes. Beautiful. So, I thought to myself: why spend my time and energy torturing Daddy, when I could really hurt him by really hurting his kids?"  
Aimes shook his head violently.  
"I'm sorry: did you say _No_? Hmm, let me think – can I remember your exact words? 'Don't waste your breath saying no, this is going to happen.' Your words made quite an impression, Thomas."  
Tommy Aimes tried to lean forward, tried to say something through the tape.  
"Are you threatening me?" Anna asked with wide-eyed innocence. "Most people in your position would be begging for mercy but you're arrogant enough to threaten me."  
She smiled again, the same wild-eyed mirthless smile that gave John a chill colder than the air conditioning.  
"Let me tell you what I plan to do to your little kids," she whispered and leaned forward. "Of course, I'll have to send John out because he still follows the code, but I think the code should be broken in exceptional circumstances and these circumstances are exceptional, don't you think?"  
" _Anna_ ," John said hoarsely, but she raised a hand to silence him and leaned over to Tommy Aimes' ear, telling him all of the vile and depraved things she was planning to inflict on his wife and children. Aimes howled, rocked the chair, tried to headbutt her, but she pulled back easily, laughing at his pain. She rubbed the barrel of her hand gun, a foot planted on his knee.  
"Shoot him, John," she said casually. "Mom and his two little angels will be back from Granny Carol's in the morning and I'm going to need some sleep before I get to work. I won't get any shut eye with this racket going on."  
"Anna," John said, distressed, " _Please_."  
"You needn't stay around for it, Johnny. This is my business, not yours. But I'm going to allow you to take the kill shot. As a thank-you for coming with me."  
Aimes howled, rocking the chair so it banged off the floor.  
"Anna – "  
"Shoot him, John."  
"Anna!"  
" _Shoot him_!"

John shot him and the room was abruptly silent.  
"Thank you," she said. "Come on."  
She checked the air-conditioning again, making sure it was as cold as it would go, then left the garage, John trailing behind her through the door to the Aimes' family's comfortable kitchen.  
"What are you planning to do?" John asked fearfully. "You can't do this, Anna. This is not you."  
"I'm not doing anything," she said. From underneath her black shirt she extracted a piece of paper with something typewritten on it and a roll of sticky tape from the pocket of her jeans. John read it quickly as she taped it up high on the door; it was addressed to Susan Aimes, warning her to keep the children out of the garage.  
"Come on," she repeated and he followed her to the front door.  
"I'll let you out and set the alarm again," she said.  
"What are you doing, Anna?" he demanded.  
She turned to face him.  
"I'm doing nothing, John," she said. "I've had a couple of years to think this through. At first I wanted to torture him. I wanted to hurt him real bad, the way he hurt me. But I don't have the stomach for that. So I thought about killing his wife and shooting his kids; I thought about doing it in front of him. I thought about it for a long time and I came to a conclusion."  
She scratched her head through the woollen cap she was wearing to cover her long dark hair.  
"I just decided that it would be enough to let him die thinking I was going to do all that stuff. Let the bastard die in fear and agony, not for his own life but for his family's. That would be enough. I've no interest in harming his wife or his girls – in fact, it would be far sweeter revenge if she found a decent guy and married him instead. If she and the girls were happier with someone else."  
She smiled up at John and for the first time that evening, it contained a touch of warmth.  
"I'm going to turn off the alarm. Get out quick and wait for me outside."

She'd wriggled back out the tiny window and pulled it shut. They left together as they came, scaling a high wall using a rope ladder, carefully stepping over the drugged bodies of the Aimes' family dogs. On the other side of the wall, Anna had stopped and turned to John. She removed her gloves and extended her hand.  
"Once again, thank you, Mr Wick," she said formally.  
"You're welcome," he said. "You know I would do anything for ..." his voice trailed off. "Anything for you," he finished.  
"I owe you, John," she said, her small hand gripping his firmly. "I mean it. Any time, any place, anything. I owe you a favour, you know that."  
"I know," he said. He bent his head so their foreheads touched, she allowed him to rest that near for a second or two, then pulled away.  
"Now get back to Montreal before dawn," she said. "Drive like the wind, man. I have to be back in bed beside Mark Pfeiffer before he sobers up."  
John felt a pang. Jealousy, maybe? He couldn't tell.  
"Will we see each other again soon?" he asked as she walked away.  
"No," she answered shortly. "Get a life, John. A real life."

"That's it," Anna said. "The end."  
Aurelio nodded in approval.  
"Very simple," he said. "Air conditioning fucked up time of death, of course. Nice alibi in your nice warm bed, John probably drove like a fucking maniac from Montreal, hit the ground in spots along the interstate. Yeah, I can see it."  
"Everyone knows one of us did it, but no one could ever definitively prove it," Anna said. "It wasn't the most complex plan I ever came up with but it sure as hell worked - and that's why the other two Aimes brothers have been on my tail ever since. That being said, John killed Martin Aimes in London, so Stephen Aimes might finally get the hint and leave me alone."  
"I don't think so," Aurelio said. "I think he's probably pretty pissed."  
Anna shrugged and twirled again.  
"So this is the favour you owe him?" Aurelio said.  
"Yup," she answered shortly.  
"Pretty big favour to ask of you," Aurelio said. "You know you've basically signed your own death warrant, don'tcha?"  
"What else could I do, Auri?" she asked. "It's John. He's the closest thing I have to family. He is my family. He's my ..."

The door opened and John looked inside.  
"Are you finally finished?" Anna said brightly. "Is your baby going to survive Howard's ministrations?"  
"I think so," he answered. "Aurelio: thank you for everything. And thank you for taking care of Dog – I mean, Haggard."  
"Hagrid," Aurelio corrected softly. "Yeah, you're welcome, John. No probs, man."  
"You ready?" he said to Anna.  
"You kiss your baby goodbye?" she teased as they left Aurelio's office. "Did you get down on your knees and smooch the hubcaps? Stroke its fender?"  
He gave her a gentle push. "Shut up," he said with a grin.  
"I can't help it if I'm jealous," she replied, mock-offended.  
"You guys take care now, you hear?" Aurelio called after them. They turned to take their leave and Aurelio's heart sank a little. "Don't do anything stupid," he warned as they stepped out of the workshop and into the weak winter sunshine.  
"Don't do anything stupid," he repeated to his empty office.


	24. Chapter 24

And so they ended up back where they started.  
"No one has been here," Anna said, astonished.  
The apartment smelled musty and stench in the kitchen indicated that the bin definitely hadn't been emptied since she left. She'd made John check inside for cockroaches or other creepy-crawlies, then had emptied the trash and opened the window as wide as it could go.  
"Who knew you lived here?" John asked.  
"You, Markus, Winston, that guy Winston sent over ..." she counted them off on her fingers. "I thought some enterprising person at The Agency would find out my address and they'd be over here with a fine-tooth comb ... but apparently not."  
She looked pleasantly surprised.  
"Whatever you paid Winston was enough to get you a top-notch disappearance," John surmised.  
"He hid me in plain sight," she said. "A short subway ride from The Continental."  
She looked around the apartment with pleasure and then tut-tutted when she saw the curtains she'd blown her nose on the day after John Wick had come storming back into her life.  
"They're going in the washer," she said, pulling a chair over to the window to take them down.

They checked everything again and again. John rang the Bowery King and checked in; he asked his favours and was granted some of the things he needed but not everything he wanted. Anna went shopping, gathering as much as she could from a long list they had compiled together. When she returned she was also carrying one of the bags she'd stored with Bernstein. He frowned when he saw it.  
"What? You think no one knows we're back in the city? The Bowery King knows, so the word has spread, my friend. I wouldn't be surprised if Margaret Bridgemont has started building a damn moat around The Continental."  
She opened the bag and extracted a couple of guns, a wallet of gold coins, a short, sharp knife, then handed him the entire bag when her mobile rang. She frowned when she looked at the screen  
"I'll be right back," she said.  
John rummaged through the back to see what other weapons she had. None. He sighed and pulled the zip up, then quickly counted the coins.

"Vy is she not dead, Anna? _Vy_? VY?" she cried and threw her mobile on the bed. John looked up.  
"Dieter?" he asked.  
"How did you guess?" she said and threw herself on to the bed beside her phone. "Vat are your plans? Vat are you going to do? And Chohn? Vat about Chohn?"  
Her impersonation was, as usual, uncannily accurate.  
"Enough already," John said, threading his belt through the loops on the waistband of his pants. "You're giving me the creeps. What did you tell him?"  
"Nothing," she said, rolling over to watch him. He drew his tie around his neck and tied it swiftly, straightening it over the buttons of his shirt. In the mirror, he caught Anna's eye. She was sedulously watchful, following his fingers as they ran over the silk of the tie. She was, he realised, _studying_ him.

She'd been diligently – and courteously – avoiding all physical contact with him, sleeping on the very edge of their shared bed, dressing and undressing in the bathroom. He'd expected her to hold a grudge, to demand to talk about his decision to put their – their _thing_ on ice, but instead she'd treated him with polite amiability. As though he were a co-worker in an adjoining cubicle. But he kept catching her looking at him when she thought he didn't notice: her forehead slightly wrinkled in concentration, as though she were internally taking notes.  
"What are you looking at?" he asked lightly.  
"You," she answered. "I've always liked to watch you get dressed. You're so ... so precise."  
She sat up cross-legged on the bed and mimed him putting on a tie: the quick, flicking fingers, the quick yank of the knot to centre it, pulling the tie downwards to get it straight – and the final downward stroke on the soft fabric to make sure it was centred between his ribs, a subconscious gesture that he didn't realise he made until he saw her do it.  
"I'm still giving you the creeps, aren't I?" she grinned. "Sorry, Johnny. You're my favourite subject, though."  
He turned his back on her to put on his gun holster.  
"Are we okay about the ... about, you know, about Helen?" he asked softly.  
In the mirror he saw her strain to hear, then flop back on the bed, her hands behind her head.  
"Sure," she said calmly. He looked at her.  
"Really?"  
"Yup. I remember how psycho I was after Pfeiffer, and he was a two-timing scumbag, so I can imagine you might need some time to get over the passing of your missus."  
Her tone was light, teasing. She'd rolled over on to her stomach so he couldn't see her face.  
"You've changed," he remarked. "The old Anna Quinn would've beaten me up or something."  
"I've matured," she declared, sitting up so he could see her again. "I am a new woman."  
He put on his jacket and grinned as she imitated him pulling at his cuffs.  
"You're still creepy, though," he said. "Get dressed and you can go and put your weird skills to the test."

Anna walked slowly down the block, her head buried in her phone, pulling an empty suitcase behind her. When she came to the basement exit at the back of The Continental, she slowed, pretending to be engrossed in the screen. The women hanging around the basement door were smoking quickly, furtively. It was the end of their shift and she knew that they always had a quick smoke before saying goodbye and heading for their bus or subway. When she'd first started, she'd spent a lot of time hanging around with the maids at The Continental, feeling more comfortable trading jokes and shrieking uproariously in the shabby break-room next to the steaming laundry than in the stultifying atmosphere of the hotel bar. Until Winston and Michael Black had taken her aside and told her that it wasn't appropriate. She was expected to socialise with her own.

The hours spent hanging around with the housekeeping staff were paying off, though. Anna knew what they did before they went home, namely to smoke outside the trade entrance, at a specific corner of the tiny yard that was not caught by the surveillance cameras, gossiping and bitching about the guests and management. A number of the women were related: sisters, cousins, in-laws, so conversations often meandered into family stories – complaining about husbands, boasting about children. The people who worked at the Continental were the children and grandchildren of Continental staff. You only got the job if you knew somebody; you generally only knew somebody with a job to give if you happened to be connected to them by blood or marriage. It was, as Winston liked to say, a family business.

Pretending to look around at the buildings, Anna shot a quick glance at the five women standing outside the door, passing a cigarette around. As she expected, she recognised three of them: Paulina, Rosalia and Gabby. They all had school-age children or grandchildren and liked to be home for homework and supper, so they preferred an earlier shift. Rosalia was still small and plump, she stood with a hand on a weary hip, her head on one side like a little bird's. Her thick hair was in a regulation bun, but by the end of the shift, some tendrils had come loose. As Anna watched, she pulled off an elastic band and plucked out a few bobby pins to let her hair down. She looked much older now, but her hair was as black as it had ever been and her brown eyes danced as she regaled the others with one of her stories. Rosalia talked like a vaudeville actress centre-stage: large, dramatic gestures and lots of eye rolling. She had to be quiet and discreet in the halls of The Continental, but in the staff break-room her suppressed energy poured out into loud and bawdy stories.  
Which made her very easy to imitate. Anna's impression of Rosalia had always garnered applause from the other maids, Rosalia herself was usually the first to beg her to perform, crying "Do me! Do me!" in her loud, nasal voice.

Anna waited till she detached from the group and snapped her ID badge off the lapel of her blouse and slipped it into her handbag.  
" _Yo me voy_ ," she said shortly. "I got a husband waiting for his dinner, _chicas_. Not enough to wait on the shitheads in this dump, I gotta wait on him at home as well."  
The others whooped in sympathy and she shrugged.  
"Least I got a day off tomorrow," the woman grinned. "Sucks to be you, bitches!"  
The other women laughed and made mock-angry gestures. She walked up the steps to street level, then set off down the road, pausing briefly to light another cigarette.

Anna hurried up behind her.  
"Excuse me, plis," she said. "I am looking for zis hotel, Ze Intercontinental? But zis is not it, correct?"  
She wasn't quite sure which accent she was imitating and neither was the woman in front of her, she guessed. She squinted behind her thick glasses, hoping Rosalia wouldn't remember the little girl from upstairs who used to hang out with the maids because she was too intimidated by the other guests on the hotel's upper floors.  
"Naw, this ain't The _Inter_ continental, lady. I think that's, like, ten, fifteen blocks from here. That way."  
"Blocks?" Anna said, looking confused. "What is zis, a block?"  
"Streets," Rosalia said and she made to move off.  
"I am so sorry," Anna said apologetically. "I am here on vacation and I cannot find my hotel. Ze taxi driver say me zis is the Intercontinental. Can you plis show on phone?"  
Anna held out her phone, Google Maps already open. The woman hesitated, then looked at her suitcase.  
"Here," she said, taking pity and then taking the phone. "What you lookin' at? That ain't even the street we're on. Wait till I find it..."  
Anna leaned in and lightly dipped her fingers into the woman's bag, extracting the badge. She slipped it into her pocket while the maid zoomed the phone out and found their location.  
"Straight ahead," she said. "I put it into your phone for you, just do what Siri tells you, okay?"  
"Thank you, thank you!" Anna cried. "I am so grateful."  
" _De nada_ ," the woman said, taking a deep drag on her cigarette.

Anna opened her coat to let it swing around her slight body. She was wearing extra padding but was still nowhere near as curvy as Rosalia, so she tried to make herself look rounder. The street outside the door was empty, a couple of cigarette butts blew in gentle zigzags as the wind pushed them around the pavement. Anna steeled herself, then swiped the barcode on Rosalia's ID card against the scanner on the door.  
The intercom crackled.  
"What you doin' back, Rosalia?" came a voice from within.  
Anna hesitated, then tried her best to imitate the other woman's voice.  
"I left my scarf behind," she said. "Just need a minute. I can let myself back out."  
"Fuck's sake, Rosie, second time this week," the voice snapped.  
"You think I'm doing it on PURPOSE?" she roared. "I already missed my subway, dinner's gonna be LATE tonight!"  
She kept her back to the camera, hat pulled low over her brow, standing with a hand on her hip with one foot tapping the way the other woman's had, trying to express Rosalia's simmering anger. It worked. The door buzzed open and she was inside.

The basement level of The Continental was like a rabbit warren. Anna stood aside when she heard people coming, but it was just a bunch of musicians, carrying their instruments down the narrow stairs to the bar. Anna found the cloak room and let herself in. The lockers were all shut, so she sneaked through to the alcove that housed the tall shelves for the newly-laundered clothes. Hesitating a moment or two, she slipped off the long coat she'd been wearing and threw it under a bench. Underneath she wore a plain black dress and black pantyhose, like all the maids wore, with the low-heeled shoes that looked similar enough to the regulation footwear – at first glance, at least. With the extra padding, her figure looked a bit more matronly and it made her look older. She rooted around in one of the baskets just returned from the laundry and found a lace collar and the white cuffs senior housekeeping staff wore instead of the maids' white aprons. John always said that Winston made them dress like the maidservants in an Edith Wharton novel; Anna maintained Winston was aiming for French brothel chic.

At the cloakroom sink she adjusted the dark wig she was wearing, tying her hair into a neat bun. Then she put in the contact lenses that turned her eyes from blue to brown. Someone had left the stub of an eyeliner pencil in front of the mirror. Anna paused for a second, then suppressed a shudder and used it to outline her eyes. The effect was dramatic; she looked quite different. Anna wished she had some eyeshadow but she hadn't thought to take makeup; her pockets were full as it was. She put on the tortoiseshell-framed glasses and swept her hair back. Looking around her, she grabbed the clipboard that held a sign-up list for the Christmas party. She turned the paper over so that she had a blank sheet to work with and tucked the little pencil behind her ear. She clipped Rosalia's ID badge to her lapel, careful to hold the clipboard in a way that obscure it, and then set off up the back stairs, nodding curtly at the bass guitarist and the saxophonist, who passed her on the way down the stairs with her instruments. Taking a quick detour, she briskly walked into the storeroom, past one of the janitors. She plucked a new lightbulb from a basket.  
"Fifth floor," she said curtly in answer to his unasked question. "The usual: needs it now. Like, now."  
The janitor nodded sympathetically and stood aside as she walked out, head high, busy. Anna paused at the door of the security office, watching the man behind the desk studying the surveillance cameras. What was his name? She'd been wracking her brains since they'd hatched the plan but she still couldn't remember it. She took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

"Yeah?" he said. He didn't take his eyes off the camera screens. Anna had always disliked him: he considered himself a cut about the housekeeping staff – he was, after all, security and therefore almost on a par with the guests themselves. _Same line of business_ , he'd liked to remind the others. She stuck her head around the door, glancing at the board behind him that contained all of the master key cards for the rooms. The maids had to sign them out when they took one. Still too important to look at her, he made a show of noting something down on his log book – and she whipped a card off a hook, replacing it with one that looked the same. Or, at distance, quite similar.  
"Chef says he just made fresh coffee," she said in a too-busy-for-this-shit voice. He'd always got his coffee from the kitchen; same coffee as for the guests – seeing as they were in the same business and all.  
"Hey – " he said and started to turn in his chair.  
She closed the door quickly and darted down the hall before he could heave his large belly into a standing position to look out the door behind her.

Once on the ground floor of the hotel, Anna marched boldly down the back corridors. Michael Black had always said that the key thing was self-assurance. It was astonishing, he maintained, how much people are willing to accept if they are faced with total confidence. Anna tried to remember his words as she strode down the carpeted corridors, smiling briefly at other members of staff. One man in a porter's uniform opened his mouth to say something to her, but she just said, "Mr Charon told me that room 505 needs a new lightbulb." – and kept going. She threw him a sympathetic smile – always on the go, eh? Back and forth all day long for these people – and he automatically smiled back at her.  
She kept going.

She knew the suite Margaret Bridgemont was staying: long-term guests usually took the fourth floor, which had self-catering facilities as well as a private conference room and a study. Not wanting to run into Winston or Charon, she took the carpeted stairs. Before she opened the fire doors to the long corridor, she straightened her shoulders and pinned a confident smile on her face, then walked through the doors. She smiled coolly at the men with walkie-talkies outside Bridgmont's door and paused at the door of room 414. They looked at her curiously and one of them, a large-set man whose very dark skin looked startling against his closely-cropped snow-white hair, reached for his walkie-talkie. She pretended to consult her clipboard then said, "You're not the ones who complained about a lightbulb gone in the bathroom are you?"  
The man's hand paused on his walkie-talkie.  
"Nah," he said. "Wasn't us."  
"Then this is the right room," she said with a bright smile and made a small mark on her clipboard.

Feigning confidence, she slid the keycard in the door lock and let herself in.  
"Hello?" she called softly. In the dim winter twilight the room was almost dark, but she didn't turn on the lights, just checked the cupboards and bathroom to confirm that it was, indeed, empty. Jones's room was a mess. He was still a slob. It was a wonder to everyone who knew him that he was still alive; he was a large man who liked to drink and smoke, he was overweight and perpetually sloppily dressed in a business where a smart appearance was considered _de rigeur_. His long survival was due in no small part to his connections: he knew everyone, he was known by everyone. And he had a boyish charm that allowed him to get away with almost anything, including a tendency to smoke in his room at The Continental, despite Winston's insistence that it was a non-smoking hotel. But Jeremy just winked at him and nudged him with one of his fleshy elbows.  
"Only out the window, eh, old friend?" he'd say and nod his head at Winston, even as the other man told him most firmly that, no, it was not all right to smoke out the window. He seemed to have no permanent residence, spending his time moving from one Continental Hotel to the next, working enough to pay the basic bills and mooching to an almost professional level to cover the others. He was particularly loathed by Winston, not only for his lack of due formality, but also because he routinely set the fire alarm off when he smoked in his room.

Anna extracted the cigar from the sleeve of her dress and looked around for the smoke alarm. Clearly learning from experience, Jones had already disconnected it. It hung from its cable, dangling ineffectively from the ceiling. She searched the mess on the desk for a lighter and an ashtray, then lit the cigar and drew on it, trying not to cough and choke at its foul taste. She puffed long enough for it to take light, then arranged it in the ashtray on top of a fold of a drape. She looked around and picked up a bottle of whisky that had rolled on the floor beside Jones's unmade bed.  
"Cheap bourbon," she murmured, wrinkling her nose in distaste. "Deserves to be burned."  
She doused the drapes with the alcohol and then looked around for other combustibles. She gathered up the newspaper Jones had probably bought for the sports results, then scrunched its pages into balls, which she tossed on the floor and desk next to the curtains.

The cigar was already smouldering; a tiny hole had formed in the material of the drape. Anna looked around, wondering what else she could do to start a fire. It needed to take a few minutes – she needed enough time to get back out of the hotel and in position – but it needed to gather momentum and burn. And burn fiercely, fiercely enough to create smoke and panic before it set the fire alarm off in the corridor. Satisfied with her handiwork, she straightened her dress, picked up her clipboard and let herself out.

"All good?" the white-haired man asked. The other two men looked around. One of them leered at her, the other stared at her without blinking.  
She smiled at them crisply. "Fine, thank you, gentlemen. Have a nice evening."  
Anna walked on.  
"Hey," the white-haired man said, "Where's the lightbulb?"  
She paused and said over her shoulder, "In the light socket. Where else?"  
"No, I mean the one you replaced. The old one."  
Shit, Anna thought.  
"See, I rang the guy at the reception. You know, the – how would you describe him, Dave?"  
"The snooty one," Dave replied, with the same unblinking gaze.  
"Yeah, the snooty one. Know what he said?"  
"He probably said that such matters as changing lightbulbs are beneath him," Anna said in Charon's melodic accent.  
The white-haired man and his leery friend laughed; Dave continued to stare at her, expressionless.  
"Yeah, that too. But he said some guy from caretaking would be up to fix it. You ain't a guy, are you?"  
Anna walked on. "I was on my way up to the fifth floor anyway," she said. "And I'm capable of screwing in a new light-bulb. If you don't mind, gentlemen, I have a long list of things to check before our housekeeping meeting at ten. Like I said, have a nice evening."  
Heart pounding, she walked on towards the doors to the stairwell. Just a few more metres, a couple dozen more steps.  
She tried not to hurry her pace. Sure, confident steps. Checking her clipboard, tucking a stray tendril of hair behind her ear. Her heart thumped in her throat. A few more metres.  
She tried not to look around when she heard one of them shout, "Hey!" Instead, she ran. The stupid dress – she'd forgotten that the slim skirt would hold her back; she pulled it up her thighs and sprinted for the door. The men behind her yelled, there was a crackle of walkie-talkie static.  
She got to the stairwell door and yanked it open, leaping down the first few steps – below her, a couple of the maids looked up, mouths open. She moved, mid-air, and a large fist circled her arm and jerked her back up the stairs.

"Now," said the white-haired man, "I don't know exactly who you are, but I have a feeling my boss is going to want to meet you."  
Anna wriggled beneath him, scratching his arm, using the toe of her shoe to jab his legs, trying to twist around to knee him in the groin.  
"Uh-huh," he warned, "none of that, little lady."  
He pulled her back into the corridor and they struggled just beyond the door. Anna tried to remember anything she'd learned in martial arts practice that might help her. Dave and the leery one came to her captor's aid and between them, they dragged her, kicking and scratching, to Margaret Bridgemont's door. The white-haired man knocked the door and Anna – locked in Dave's vice-like grip - gave it one last try, using her strength to try to head butt him. The white-haired man looked at her, startled, then slapped her across the face with enough force to momentarily stun her. And, using this to his advantage, he opened the door to the Kennedy Suite and Dave shoved her in.

"Well, this is vexing," said the woman behind the big desk. She didn't look away from her laptop screen. "I hope you have good reason to disturb me, Mr Tyrell."  
"We found this one outside, acting suspiciously," he said humbly. "We think she might be working with Wick."  
Margaret Bridgemont looked up and looked at her for the first time.  
"Of course she is, you fool. Don't you recognise her? That's Anna Quinn."  
Tyrell gave her a little shake of disgust.  
"Welcome, Miss Quinn," Mrs Bridgemont said. "I've been looking forward to meeting the woman who wrecked my home."  
"Likewise," Anna said weakly.


	25. Chapter 25

Mrs Bridgemont was sitting behind a large oak desk in the middle of the living room of the Kennedy Suite, a set of rooms that encompassed half of the fourth floor. She didn't even look at her, just clicked at the open laptop. She scrolled for a second or two then looked up at Anna and back at the screen.  
"You look different than your Agency picture," she remarked.  
"Contact lenses," Anna said. "Wig."  
"Take them out and it off," Bridgemont commanded and she did so, blinking rapidly. She looked around for a place to put the wig, then tossed it on a decorative sofa. It lay on a cushion like a sleeping dog.  
"Yes, I see it now. Older but not wiser, I fear. Pretty ballsy of you to come after me in The Continental."  
"I didn't have much choice," replied Anna.

"Well, let's have a proper look at you then, duckie," said Margaret Bridgemont, removing her glasses.  
She was well into her seventies, Anna calculated, small and neatly dressed in a long tunic top over blue jeans. Her tiny feet were clad in expensive sneakers and they tapped out a rhythm that no one could hear. Mrs Bridgemont looked like a member of an active senior citizens' group – one of those ladies whose social calendar was packed with bridge afternoons, Nordic walking and charitable events.  
The large man pushed Anna forward.  
"So, Miss Quinn, are your affairs in order?" the older woman asked, glancing back down at her papers, setting some apart in a neat bundle on her desk.  
"I'm sorry?"  
"Have you written your will? Have you appointed an executor of your estate?"  
"Um – yes," Anna stuttered.  
"Good girl," said Mrs Bridgemont distractedly, sifting through the papers. "Then Mr Tyrell here will take you to a mutual acquaintance of ours, the remaining Brother Aimes. He asked that we hand you over, should you turn up – and, naturally, you turned up."  
"You're very ... businesslike," Anna said, astonished.  
Bridgemont looked up again, pulling her glasses down her nose with a fingertip.  
"Death is our business," she rebuked. "Of course I'm business-like. What did you expect? A bleeding James Bond villain? Am I supposed to reveal my plans for world domination until Mr Wick crashes through the window in an Aston Martin? Take her outside, Mr Tyrell."

Anna struggled in Tyrell's grip, opening her mouth to say something, but Mrs Bridgemont was already engrossed in her documents. Just before they reached the door, Bridgemont looked up and signalled that they should stop.  
"Where is Wick, by the way?" she asked. "In case you feel like any last-minute confessions."  
"I don't," Anna said. "But if you hand me over to Aimes, he will come for you."  
"He's coming for me anyway," Bridgemont said dismissively. "But if you couldn't do the deed, I doubt that he will. I know everyone likes to go on about John Wick – the bogeyman; killed three men with a pencil, blah, blah – but I personally liked your style. You were creative and I admired that."  
"Thank you," Anna said, feeling a note of hysteria rising in her throat. It was not the kind of conversation she'd expected to have with Margaret Bridgemont and she noted the other woman's use of the past tense with a chill.  
"Wick is fine for a certain kind of job," Bridgemont continued. "Consistent. Dependable. But you always had an element of unpredictability and I liked that."  
She smiled jovially at Anna. "Of course, as is often the case with successful women, you were woefully underestimated. Always known John Wick's sidekick – but I felt you had a lot to offer on your own."  
She pushed her glasses back up. "Well, credit where credit is due, after all. It's nice to go out on a high note, isn't it? Tyrell, please continue. Nice to have met you, Miss Quinn."

Tyrell put his hand on the doorknob. Suddenly a loud alarm beeped insistently outside their door.  
"That's fire, Missus B.," said Tyrell.  
"Yes, yes," Bridgemont said. "Ignore it. She probably set a bin on fire somewhere to make the fire alarm go off."  
Anna said nothing, but Mr Tyrell shifted uneasily as he heard footsteps in the corridor outside.  
"Will I check if it's real, Missus B?" he asked.  
"Very well," she said, not looking up. "But take her with you, please. I have a lot of work to do."

Tyrell opened the door and looked out. The corridor was smoky and a small group had assembled outside Jackson Jones's room.  
"There's smoke, Missus B," he said worriedly.  
"And where there's smoke, there's fire," she snapped. "Yes, yes. I'm sure the place is burning down. Go find out what's wrong."  
Tyrell pushed out of the room, pulling Anna behind him. He'd barely taken a couple of steps when, seeing him, a member of the assembled party broke away from the group and hurried towards them.  
It was Winston. He frowned when he saw Anna in tow, pursing his lips in a silent _tut-tut_.  
"Is Mrs Bridgemont within?" he asked Tyrell, ignoring her.  
The big man nodded and Winston knocked discreetly, waiting for a signal before entering the room.  
Tyrell looked at Anna and shrugged; they followed him.

"Mrs Bridgemont," he said, wringing his hands, "I regret to inform you that there is a fire in the room adjacent to your suite."  
Margaret Bridgemont lowered her pen like a gun: slowly and with great menace.  
"She – "she said nodding at Anna "is literally trying to smoke me out, so her partner in crime can assassinate me on the front steps. I will not leave, I will not be evacuated. It's probably a smoke bomb or something equally infantile. You might be stupid enough to fall for it, Winston, but I won't be."  
Through the Continental's triple-glazed glass they heard the faint wail of fire trucks. Bridgemont looked at Winston and raised an eyebrow.  
"Madam," he said urgently, "this room belongs to a gentleman known for his propensity to illicitly smoke upon the premises. I suspect he may have left a cigar smouldering and the curtains caught fire. The room is in flames and, if you might have noticed, things are getting quite smoky outside. I myself will now be evacuating the premises and I would recommend you take Mr Tyrell and Miss Quinn with you."  
"I'm not setting foot outside the door," she said calmly. "I will wait in the lobby. This is a ploy by this idiot woman and her equally stupid partner."  
"Fine, fine," Winston said distractedly. He held the door open and waited impatiently till Mrs Bridgemont had serenely gathered her papers and stuffed them into her briefcase, gathering her laptop up under her arm. Out in the corridor they covered their mouths and noses with their sleeves. A couple of burly firefighters were banging the door down the corridor and they could hear the dull roar of the fire within.  
"Get out of here now!" one of them hollered at the little group. Bridgemont waved a dismissive hand in his direction and strolled calmly to the stairs, where she descended at the same unhurried pace, her hand brushing the banisters lightly.

"If this is your doing, so help me God," Winston muttered in Anna's ear. He was a man unused to taking stairs and the steps were taking their toll on him. "My hotel! You had better not have damaged my hotel."  
"I was in the room with _her_ ," she answered. "Why is everyone blaming me?"  
"Are you armed?" he asked.  
"Of course not. I came to bargain."  
"She doesn't make bargains. How did you get in?"  
"I walked in," she said simply.  
"Where's John?"  
"He stayed away."  
Winston, breathing heavily, muttered something under his laboured breath, then said, "I still mean what I said. One more kill on Continental grounds and you're both dead, get it?"  
She nodded.

The Continental's guests were gathered outside in varying degrees of undress. Charon was weaving between them with a tray of whiskey and brandy glasses, offering sustenance against the New York cold.  
"Hold her," Bridgemont snapped at Mr Tyrell and made her way over to one of the tables near a window. "Well – brandy, Winston. Hop, hop," she said and opened her briefcase.  
"Hop, hop," Anna murmured as he passed her by and he shot her a filthy look as he made his way to the abandoned bar to get Mrs Bridgemont her brandy. The hotel lobby was eerily quiet, except for the dull droning of the fire alarm. Anna wriggled in Tyrell's grasp; he was holding her tight and it was starting to affect the circulation in her arm.  
" _Ow_ ," she moaned dramatically, but the man beside her only squeezed her arm more tightly in reply. Somewhere, a second alarm went off and Winston hurried back into the lobby, placing the brandy so abruptly on Bridgemont's table that it sloshed over and splashed a couple of drops on her papers. She tut-tutted and delicatey removed a tissue from a small packet in her purse to mop it up.

The fire fighters still standing on the street sprang into action and entered the lobby.  
"Second alarm, sir," one of them said to another. "Coming from the basement area."  
"Not the basement," Winston said with alacrity. "There's nothing down there of interest – nothing combustible, I imagine."  
He tapped the glass to attract Charon's attention and signalled him to come inside. Anna had never seen him unnerved before, but the small troop of firefighters stomping across the Continental's Persian rugs seemed to fluster him immeasurably. A small sheen of sweat appeared across his brow and he stopped a fireman to tell him that he would send someone down with them to lead the way.  
"Not necessary," he answered brusquely.  
"Mr Charon," Winston hissed and the other man moved quickly forward, dangling the heavy ring that held the keys to all of the Continental's older doors, like a carrot on the stick.  
"I swear to God," he said to Anna, "I swear on all things good and holy that I will have your life for this if you started that fire."

The people gathered outside had started to come back into the lobby. A young fire fighter left to patrol the foyer had the unlucky task of trying to shoo them outside. They told him to fuck off: if she – nodding at Bridgemont – was staying inside, so were they. They sat at the tables, nursing their glasses, talking in low voices.  
"Ladies and gentlemen," Winston began in a placating voice. "Fire regulations state that the hotel must be evacuated until the fire is brought under control."  
"Fuck you, Winston," said a cheerful man dressed only in an undershirt and a pair of dress pants. "I'm not fucking moving."

Suddenly the door next to the reception burst open and a fireman stomped into the lobby, bringing a wave of smoke with him as though he'd been spat from the mouth of a dragon. People sitting closest to the door started to cough.  
"What the hell's going on in here, people?" he roared. "You have orders to evacuate the building now. Now!"  
He made whooshing gestures with his arms, signalling the people in the lobby to leave. Perhaps startled by dramatic entrance, his sooty face, they stood up and gathered their glasses, moving to the front door. The younger fireman looked relieved, he held the door open and said, "Ma'am, sir," as they passed.  
"You, too," the older firefighter snapped at Mrs Bridgemont.  
"I'm not leaving," she said calmly.  
"Fine," he said in a threatening tone, "I can get any one of my brothers in blue outside to come in here and arrest you for obstruction. Outside. _Now_."  
She glanced at Winston.  
"There are a dozen police officers outside," he said smoothly. "At least a dozen, not to mention your own people. You will be perfectly safe."  
With a martyred sigh, she picked up her briefcase and laptop and walked down the steps. The older fireman said something to the younger one, who escorted her outside, then he turned and looked at Anna.  
She nodded.  
He pushed the large doors open, shouting orders into the walkie-talkie on his shoulder.

When Tyrell pulled her forward, Anna pretended to stumble, bending to rub her knee.  
"One minute," she gasped, "I twisted it."  
The last remaining guests were wrapping up against the cold outside, buttoning their jackets and coats, dawdling to avoid having to go back out into the cold. The alarms continued to thud dully, echoing in the near-empty foyer.  
A gun shot rang out outside and there were screams. Tyrell dragged her to the window, where they saw a crowd of people bowed and bending down around someone on the ground.  
"Missus B!" he cried and let her go.  
"It was Wick," one of the guests at the door said, peering outside. "Behind the fire truck. I saw him. Gone – that way, on foot."  
"Who got it?" the other asked.  
"Bridgemont. Head."

The door beside the reception burst open and Mr Charon hurried in, reaching behind his desk for a handgun. Like a tiger he moved silently forward to Winston's side, straining his head to look out the nearest window. He whispered something in his employer's ear and they both looked at Anna.  
"Quinn!" Winston said in a low growl. "Anna Quinn!"  
The remaining guests looked around, startled. He snatched the gun from Charon's grasp. The other man understood and immediately stood at the hotel door, blocking anyone from coming in or going out.  
"No kills on Continental grounds," Winston snarled. "I made that clear."  
"It wasn't on Continental ground," she argued, holding her hands up. "We followed the rules."  
"You bent the rules," corrected Winston.  
"Winston," she said. "We had no choice. We didn't break the rules."  
The bystanding guests started to murmur. Outside they heard the noise of sirens, shouting.  
Winston cocked the gun. "Why don't you admit that you set fire to Mr Jones's room?"  
"Jesus, Winston, I – "  
He smiled. "We have you on camera, Anna. Charon says he can't be completely sure, of course, but I would recognise you anywhere."  
"Winston, let me explain – "  
"Do you know what is worse than killing someone on Continental grounds, Miss Quinn? Setting fire to my hotel!"  
"I'm sorry, Winston."  
He smiled, shook his head. Nodded at Charon, who glanced out the door to make sure no one was watching. Winston took aim.  
"This isn't for Margaret Bridgemont, then. This is for trying to burn down my damn hotel. For helping John Wick when you should have kept your nose clean and stayed out of it. How many times have I told you, little Bird, that that man will be the death of you?"

And he shot her in the chest. She felt the impact of the bullet as a whopping thump but the last thing she really was aware of was the sharp pain when she whacked her head as she fell.  
"The death of me," she thought and slipped into blackness. 


	26. Chapter 26

"Am I dead?" Anna asked.  
"Yes," came the reply.  
Anxious, she said, "Really?"  
"Yes."  
She blinked in the bright light and tried to raise a hand to shield her eyes, but her arm didn't work. She tried to tell the person – the man? the woman? – but this creature simply put a hand over her eyes and said, "Shush, now. You're dead, remember?"

x x x

"What are you wearing, Annie?"  
Annie squirmed around to look at her big brother. They were sitting on the steps to the basement so Quinn could have a smoke. His mom had a thing about the smoke.  
"They'll kill you!" she'd say and whack the offending cigarette out of his hand, exposing a scraggy arm bruised and potholed with burns and needle scars. Mrs Finnerty saw no irony in her hatred of cigarettes, so her children hid in the filthy basement to smoke.  
"Do you like it?" she said and held out the skirt for him to see. She'd found it in a bag beside a dumpster over on Richmond Street, where the rich people lived. Well, not rich: where the normal people live. The ones with Dads that went to work and Moms that packed school lunches. Annie'd spotted a bag of clothes when she was out for one of her afternoon prowls, and the bright pattern of the cotton dress stuffed in the top had caught her eye.  
"You know that's a lady's blouse?" Quinn had said, pulling on his cigarette.  
"No, it's not," Annie said confidently. "It's a dress."  
He rubbed his eyes wearily with a hand. "Did Mom see you wearing that? Did she say anything?"  
Annie stuck out her chin. "Momma has been real tired a lot recently. She didn't say nothing."  
"Anything," Quinn corrected, his voice sombre. "She didn't say anything. Did your teacher say anything?"  
"She said it was real nice and asked me where I got it and I told her my mom bought it – "  
"Did she? Did mom buy it?"  
Annie looked away. "I found it."  
"Where?"  
"In this bag. Someone wanted to throw it away, Quinn!" her voice rose in a wail. "And it's real nice, like new. I didn't steal it, I swear. They wanted to throw it out in the trash!"  
Quinn stubbed his cigarette out with the tip of his battered Chucks. His soles were worn thin and the canvas was threadbare over one of the toes. He put an arm around his little sister and pulled her in for a hug.  
"You deserve better than this, Annie, you hear? Much better than this. There's no one looking out for you."  
Annie nuzzled her forehead against his bony shoulder.  
"It's okay, Quinn. You're looking out for me," she said.  
He pulled her closer and said nothing.

x x x

"Anna. Anna. Miss Quinn!"  
She opened her eyes. It wasn't bright any more; in fact it was so gloomy, she wasn't sure whether her eyes were fully open or not.  
"Look at me, Anna. Focus, girl. She's a bit woozy, still," said the voice, "but that's hardly surprising."  
"Where am I?" she asked.  
"You're ..."  
Anna blinked once or twice till the speaker came into focus. It was an older man, dressed in scruffy clothes. He smelled of alcohol but he had a stethoscope around his neck and a small flashlight in his hand, which he shone into her eyes without warning.  
"Hey!" she yelped.  
"You're somewhere safe," said a familiar voice. She turned her head – so slowly, everything was turning slowly, as though she were watching it from a carousel.  
"It's you," she said to the Bowery King.  
"It is I," he answered with a smile.  
"Where's John?"  
He shrugged. "I don't know."  
Anna tried to sit up abruptly, causing the doctor to shout and push her back down roughly. She grabbed the side of the gurney to steady herself and looked around. She was in a cellar – or what looked like a sewer. There was a vaulted brick ceiling and a large incinerator at one end of the room that was burning brightly and heating the large open area filled with beds. On the gurney beside her there was a man attached to a drip. He was probably alive but he was as motionless as a corpse.

"Where's John?" she said, her voice rising in panic. "Is he okay? Is he alive? Where is he?"  
"I'm gonna have to give her something," said the doctor. "She's getting all excited and she's going to pull her stitches or fall off this damn thing."  
"Don't give me anything!" she shrieked and grabbed the King's sleeve. "Is John okay? What are you not telling me? Is he dead?"  
She felt the jab of the needle and whipped her head around – too fast. The room turned and she fell back against the thin pillow, steadied by the doctor's rough hand.  
"Is he dead?" she whispered, still grasping the King's sleeve.  
"No," he said and removed her fingers with a _moue_ of distaste. "But you are."

x x x

The first night they slept in the same bed – sent to bed by Michael Black like two children, both protesting and promising to behave better and make more of an effort to act like a couple – Anna had stripped naked in front of John in an act of defiance, tossing her clothes on to the floor and furniture while she rooted in her bag for her night clothes. Another man might've thought to make a move, take advantage of her nudity, and one part of her was secretly hoping that John might – against the odds – try it, so she'd have an excuse to beat the shit of out him. But he did what she knew he'd do: he turned away, muttered, " _Anna_!" in a scandalised tone, grabbing his overnight bag and disappearing into the bathroom.

She was disgusted by him. He was as far from the guys she'd grown up with as she could possibly imagine: gentle, quiet, thoughtful. _Sensitive_. Ugh. It made her sick. When Mr Black hired a tutor to teach them the rudiments of art appreciation, the basics of architectural studies, classical music and some world history, she could barely suppress her boredom: a lot of dead white guys doing dead-white-guy stuff. But John had been the model student, lapping it up and asking questions, taking notes with his left-hand held awkwardly, scribbling in his cramped handwriting. She'd called him a suck-up but he'd shrugged defensively and said, "There's nothing wrong with wanting to better yourself, Anna."  
"Yeah, right," she'd answered and watched him flick through the book on Japanese samurai culture that the tutor had loaned him.

At first she'd been disdainful of him, she thought that a sissy like John Wick would survive approximately ten minutes on the streets of her Boston neighbourhood ... then she'd seen him fight and she'd changed her mind. From then on, she'd kept a wary eye on him: something inside him could allow him kill a man with his bare hands and she didn't particularly care to find out what it was. She still wasn't pleased that she'd been paired up with him, but she could recognise that he was really good at what they did – better than her, much as it galled her to admit it. She knew Michael Black was right, they both had better chances of surviving if they stuck together, so stuck together they were. For better or for worse. Like a real marriage, for fuck's sake.

When he came out of the bathroom, she was already feigning sleep on one side of the bed, wrapped in most of the blanket. Anna heard him sigh, felt the bed depress and a gentle tug at the blanket, which she pretended to ignore. She heard him sigh again, adjust the pillow and within minutes, he was asleep. She rolled over and examined him by the light of the street lanterns, lying on his back with the thin bed cover as a blanket. She suddenly felt a little sorry for him and threw some of the comforter over him before she turned her back to him and settled her head on her own pillow.  
"Thank you," he whispered to her in the darkness.

x x x

When she woke up again, everything seemed much clearer, more in focus. She was in another room, a plain room with a small sink at one end and grey concrete walls.  
Suddenly a nun loomed over her and she started in fright.  
"Am I hallucinating?" she thought.  
"No, you're not," the other woman said.  
"Did I say that out loud?"  
"No, I'm a mind reader," the nun snapped. She was an elderly woman, clad in a grey habit, her face was set in cross lines and her mouth was permanently pinched.  
"You're the one who told me I was dead," Anna realised. "Why did you tell me I was dead?"  
"Because you _are_ dead," the nun said, pushing back the grey material of her veil. "You're not here, you don't exist, you're dead."  
"What do you mean?" Anna said, gingerly touching her head, trying to touch the wad of cotton on the back of her skull.  
"Don't touch!" the nun said and slapped her hand down. She reached into the folds of her habit and withdrew a surprisingly new iPhone. "It's me. Your dead girl's awake. Come and explain what's going on."  
The nun picked up the little metal bowl beside the gurney containing bits of bloody gauze and cotton wool.  
"You stay here and don't move. Himself will be down in a few minutes and he'll tell you what's what."  
"One more thing," Anna said, trying to turn to see her, "was a man brought in here with me? Dark hair, beard? Umm, kind of skinny, straight nose, scar on his stomach..."  
"John Wick?" the nun asked.  
"Yes!"  
"Nah, haven't seen him. Have never seen him in fact, but half the city's looking for him now that he's killed that bitch Margaret Bridgemont. Lord have mercy on her soul," the nun added quickly and blessed herself. "Now do what I say: lie down and shut up till someone comes along and tells you what to do."

x x x  
She was sitting on the edge of the gurney, trying not to vomit. Her abdomen was sore to the touch, her head hurt so badly, it made tears prick her eyes. If she hadn't been concentrating so hard on not retching, she might've howled with pain.

The door opened and the Bowery King came in, followed by a man in a long, dark coat and a dapper black fedora.  
"Hello, your majesty," she said with a weak smile. "Hello, Winston. You fucker."  
"I'm so sorry, little bird, but John made me do it."  
"John made you shoot me?" she asked incredulously.  
The two men looked at one another. "She really doesn't know," the Bowery King said. "You tell her, then, Win."

Winston undid the top button of his coat, then looked around and thought better of it.  
"Well," he said, clearing his throat. "John contacted me and told me that he'd been given the order to kill Margaret Bridgemont and told me what you'd planned to do."  
"John called you up?" Anna cried, then winced as various parts of her sang out in pain.  
"You surely didn't think that you could just walk into my hotel, did you?" Winston asked with a smug grin. "Tsk, tsk, silly woman."  
"But what about the fire – the fire brigade? Did you know about that?"  
"In fact, John promised me he'd use a smoke bomb so I'm rather vexed that you took it upon yourself to actually burn one of my rooms down, Anna."  
"Sorry," she mumbled.  
"But, yes, I knew the King would have some contacts in the emergency services, so I wasn't surprised to see John in my lobby in his firefighter jacket and helmet."  
"But you knew it was John?"  
"The pants, Anna. Amazing how many people didn't notice in the panic of the evacuation that one of the firefighters was wearing plain black pants. Of course, who notices such things on a dark winter afternoon?"  
"You did," Anna pointed out.  
"I did," Winston smiled. "Then he went outside, divested himself of his jacket and headgear – and shot her in the head as he passed. There was such a brouhaha that her goons initially thought it was a sniper and the ensuing panic allowed him – we presume – to get away."  
"You presume?" Anna said.

The two men shrugged in unison.  
"No one's seen him since," the Bowery King said. "And Dieter Römermann can't contact him. It's like he disappeared off the face of the earth."  
"Did Dieter cancel our contracts?" Anna said hoarsely.  
"Done and dusted and I have the markers," Winston said smoothly.  
"So Dieter's head of the High Table now? He got what he wanted?"  
Winston looked at the King, who grinned widely at Anna. "Not exactly," the Bowery King said. "John cleverly pointed out that Mrs Bridgemont would leave a gap in her wake and he suggested I might be the right person to fill that gap."  
"There are eleven seats now?" Anna asked, confused.  
Winston chuckled.  
"There are twelve," the Bowery King said. "The D'Antonio family will not give up their seat that easily. Some cousin or nephew is already lined up to take Gianni's place and God help the person who thinks they will keep the D'Antonio clan from the Table."

"So you have a seat now," Anna said, shifting her weight slightly. The room started to spin but it eased after a moment or two. "What did you have to do to get it?"  
"I have Winston's support," the Bowery King said and he smiled warmly at the other man. "And his endorsement. That counts for something."  
"And what do you have?" Anna asked Winston.  
"I have John's marker," Winston said. "He gave it back to me as a simple exchange: his majesty here gets a claim on the twelfth seat, you and John are freed from your obligations to him."  
Anna looked at him. "So where's John?" she asked.  
"Miss Quinn," the King said, "we really don't know."  
Something was nagging her. She closed her eyes so she could focus.  
"And why did you shoot me?" she murmured. Her headache was getting worse. "You never told me why."  
"John told me you'd be wearing a vest. He said I should shoot you in front of witnesses so everyone would think you were dead. I was sceptical myself, but then, as you fell, you whacked your head off one of my coffee table – which I'm adding to your list of damages, please note – and there was blood everywhere and you were out cold. Very dramatic and just the thing we needed. We carried you out of there in a body bag; it was magnificent."  
"So I'm dead," Anna said. "That's why people keep telling me I'm dead."

Winston perched himself on the gurney beside her and looked up at the Bowery King, who excused himself and quietly left the room.  
"John wants you to go back to your old life," Winston said. "As far as everyone's concerned, I shot you – and you would be surprised how many people told me that I should've done it a long time ago. Goodness, you do rub people up the wrong way."  
"Why did John do that?" she cried. "I don't want to go back to my old life. We're in this together. He needs me."  
Winston squeezed her hand. "You need him, perhaps," he said. "John will be fine and you know that. He wants you to go back to your other life – you can start again in a different state. Make some excuse and leave New York, settle down and get a job in a nice elementary school in the boondocks somewhere. Meet a nice guy. Get married. Have babies."  
"I don't want any of that," she said. "I want to be with John."  
"He said he can't protect you," Winston said. "He wants you to go back to what you had before he came back into your life."  
"Is that what he said?" Anna asked.  
Winston stood up.  
"He told me to say to you that this is your get-out-of-jail-free card," he said. "And he insisted you take it."  
Anna stared at him. "Uh-huh," she said finally. "I'll find him. If anyone can find him, I will."  
"No," Winston said. "he doesn't want to be found. Leave him, Anna."  
"I'm not leaving him," Anna said and felt a sadness swell inside her. "He's leaving me."  
"Little bird," Winston said, "he's already left you." 


	27. Chapter 27

Winston loathed funerals. Especially, he now found, when the deceased was sitting on his sofa, eating crackers and watching Netflix. He looked around discreetly as the priest murmured some comforting general platitudes about the next world being so much better than this and counted the attendees, knowing that late Miss Quinn would want to know who had come to pay their respects. Aurelio was standing to one side, a particularly unattractive mutt at his feet. He was red-nosed, his head turned from the little plot, probably trying to blink back tears. Aside from that, there were three maids from The Continental, who tried to stay as far from their boss as they could, standing with their arms linked and fingers entwined in rosary beads, muttering prayers in Spanish. There was a man from their Agency days, an old-timer called Hawkins, a man who'd remained alive long enough to retire by dint of pure luck rather than any particular skill or talent. He was one of the few still living: all rest that had known or worked with Quinn or Wick were long dead. Winston distracted himself from the cold by doing a mental tally of all those that had been on the books with Anna when she'd been a professional: Marcus. Dead. Miss Knight. Dead. Miss Perkins. Dead. Mr Pfeiffer. Dead. Michael Black. Dead, dead, dead. The list went on, it was too tiresome to even continue.

Anna – or the pile of ash he'd scraped from his fire grate that morning and dumped in an urn – was being buried next to Miss Perkins, something she would be most displeased about. Neither she nor Miss Perkins cared much to be in the same room together in this life, so he was certain she would not be pleased to know that she'd been assigned the plot next to Perkins for the afterlife. But that's the way it went: the Agency-owned graves were assigned to their employees as part of their life insurance policy, a random potluck that decided where you ended up in their tidy little graveyard. The Agency owned a plot of land close enough to the main cemetery to appear to be part of it, but their land was, of course, unconsecrated. No priest would allow any of their ranks to be buried among the faithful without expressing sincere contrition before their passing. And as professionals were wont to shuffle off their mortal coil in a manner that did not allow a lot of prior reflection – usually with a swift bullet to the head or a vital organ – their final resting place was as shadowy a limbo as their lives had been: buried in the middle of the city's regular citizens, but separate and alone.

The priest blessed himself and Winston smiled benignly at him. He was never entirely sure what to do at these Catholic ceremonies, so he generally tried to look earnest and well-intentioned. As he looked around, he spotted two men on the other side of the low wall. One of them nudged the other when he saw Winston and they both sauntered off, trying too hard to be inconspicuous. Whose goons were they? Römermann's or from the Bridgemont estate? Not that it mattered: they clearly wanted to make sure Anna was dead and possibly hoped that John would put in an appearance at her graveside. While their curiosity as to the former might have been appeased, the latter was a sore disappointment: John was gone and no one knew where.

Winston adjusted his scarf and turned to leave, coming face to face with Aurelio.  
"I know what you done," he snarled, "and you gotta cheek coming here like that."  
"Well, I – "  
"You fuckin' killed her," Aurelio shouted, causing the priest to look up, startled. One of the maids rushed over and pulled him away. It took Winston a moment or two to remember: his sister, of course. She glared at them both, pulling her brother away. " _Venga, Auri,_ " she said. "Leave it be, honey."  
"You'll get yours," Aurelio said, yanking the dog's leash. "You'll get yours, old man."  
His sister tugged him away, shooting a filthy look at Winston as they left.  
Such a nasty business, funerals.

Anna wouldn't believe him when he said he didn't know where John was. Holed up in Winston's private quarters at the Continental, he was worn out trying to make her see that the life, the lives, that she had known were over. She kept insisting that she could and would find Wick – he needed her. He came to her, after all. Finally, Winston collected her paperwork from the Agency archivist and sat down with her, so they could sort out her will and tidy up any loose ends her fake death had created in the lives of Ann Finnerty and Eileen O'Grady. Anna had been close-mouthed about her family, but Winston had seen to it that her brother and an older sister were informed of her death. ("Under which circumstances did Ann Finnerty pass?" Winston asked delicately. "Overdose," was the short answer. "It's a family tradition") and he had an inordinate amount of trouble dealing with the head teacher at the school she'd been teaching at in her third life as Eileen. When that was all done, he had to tackle the Agency paperwork, including the insurance that continued to run long after she'd ceased to work for them. It was a handsome settlement that would be paid out to her beneficiary in the case of an early death and Winston noted with interest that Anna had named John Wick as the recipient of this payment. Without saying anything, he arranged for the money to be transferred to the bank account he'd opened in her new name. He was certain that John did not need the money and even if he did, Winston had no way of getting it to him.

Anna watched him sift through the files and make phone calls. She was constantly on her phone, a new phone, registered in her new name, tapping and scrolling, looking for anything or anyone that would connect her with John. Finally, fearful that she would blow her own cover, Winston confiscated it while she was taking a shower and hid it in his safe. When she got angry with him, he simply turned his back on her.  
"There is no point in becoming vexed, little bird. You seem to have difficulty understanding that you must not try to find Jonathan. It is over."  
"It's not over," she hissed.  
"Anna," Winston said, taking one of her hands in his, "it is over. At least, for now. Don't you understand? This is John's gift to you: he's given you another chance. A fresh start. Don't you understand what this means?"  
She jutted her chin out. "We should be together," she said.  
"Tosh," Winston tsk-tsked. "He has given you the ultimate gift, Anna," he repeated. "He's given you a life and this is a lot coming from a man whose own life is forfeit. He wants you to take it."  
She stared at him through narrowed eyes. "I don't want his stinking gift," she said.  
Winston shrugged. "It's what he wants," he said. "And he must want it badly because it would have been far easier to keep you by his side."  
She looked out the window, her eyes scanning the skyline, thinking.  
"Do you think he'll come back for me, Win?" she asked softly.  
"I'm sure he will, birdie," Winston said.  
 _If he lives,_ he thought.

x x x

 _Five months later_

Annika Smith rang up the customer's purchase and placed the book in the bag.  
"Enjoy it," she said and smiled at the older woman. The bookstore was quiet, so she went back to tidying shelves, straightening books and rearranging displays.

Muriel, the owner, smiled at her as she passed. Muriel had given her a part-time job as a favour to her brother, Winston, but had upped her hours when she realised what a treasure she had found. Winston trained his managers well: the girl was clever and efficient and had already come up with some good ideas to promote the store and make the most of their display space. When she wasn't dealing with her co-workers or customers, she seemed to slip into a reflective, almost melancholy, state. Once or twice Muriel had caught her simply standing by the window, looking out at the busy street outside. When offered a penny for her thoughts, Annika had just smiled wryly and said, "I was just looking at the rain. I thought it rained a lot in New York but it sure rains a lot more here in Seattle."

It wasn't the truth, of course. Muriel suspected she was thinking about the fiancé that had been killed. Winston hadn't said much, of course: mugging gone wrong, poor guy had been stabbed multiple times, hence his employee's decision to relocate to another city, one that held no memories. Where she could have a fresh start. Muriel had been so touched by the story – which only confirmed her secret suspicion that New York was a hotbed of dangerous knife-wielding, gun-toting madmen – and had immediately offered to give her a few hours' work till she got settled. It was a decision she'd not regretted for a minute.

"Quiet today," Annika remarked. She was re-organising some books in the European cookery section, swiftly moving them in and out of shelves so the recipe books were in the correct sections for their countries of origin.  
"It might pick up in the afternoon," Muriel said and discreetly wiped a little coffee table down with the soft cloth she always kept in her pocket for that purpose. The store was dotted with comfortable chairs and occasional tables and Muriel liked to keep a posy of fresh flowers in the table vases. It was a small touch, but one her customers always remarked on.  
"Someone forget their phone," she said, picking it up. She didn't know much about mobiles but this one looked quite new. "I'm going to put it in the lost and found box."  
"Okay," Annika said, struggling to get a large tome on French cooking back into its designated place.

The phone started to ring.  
"Oh dear," said Muriel. "Should I answer it?"  
"Who's calling?" Annika asked, over her shoulder. "If the display says, I don't know, _home_ or _work_ or _mom_ or something like that, it's probably the owner trying to find it."  
"It says – " Muriel held it at arm's length so she could read it without her glasses, "it says _Michael Black_."  
Annika froze, then whipped around, a smile pinned across a face suddenly devoid of colour.  
"I'm such an idiot," she said. "That's my phone. I must've put it down on the table."  
She took it out of Muriel's hand and Muriel noticed the other woman's fingers were icy. Annika tapped the 4-digit code into the phone and frowned as it continued to ring.  
"Not yours, then?" asked Muriel.  
"It is," she said lightly. "Just pressed the wrong button."  
She tapped something else into the phone, then held it to her ear and said, "Hello?"  
Muriel looked at her sharply.  
"An old friend," Annika said. "I need to take this," and she left quickly.  
Muriel watched her scurry out the door to the little yard at the back. She'd never seen Annika make or take a phone call at the shop – certainly never on the shop floor and never in her breaks or in her lunch hour. And now she was rushing out the door to answer her phone, two spots of high colour in her white face, as though her life depended on it.  
Very curious indeed.

X x x

"John," she whispered. "Are you okay?"  
"Are _you_ okay?" he answered.  
"Yes, I'm fine." She swallowed a lump in her throat. "Where are you? Were you in the store?"  
He ignored her questions. "I don't have much time, Annie. I'm okay, I'm just working on trying to fix this."  
"Trying to fix it?"  
"Make it stop. I just want to make it stop. Are you safe? Does anyone else know where you are?"  
"You, Winston, Charon. That's all, I guess."  
"Okay. Stay where you are. When this is over, I'll come back for you."  
"But I can – "  
"No."  
"But, John – "  
"No."  
" _John_ ," she cried, "hear me out. I can help you. You know what I –

"No," he said. "Just no, Anna."  
"Listen," she said firmly. "I can help you. No one knows that I'm still alive, which means that I – "  
"Anna," he said, his voice so soft that she had to strain to hear him, "I want you to do me a favour. A huge favour."  
She was silent.  
"Just stay there," he continued. "Stay there and stay safe. Do you understand me?"  
She said nothing.  
"Anna?" he said. "Please?"  
"I fucking hate you, John Wick. You're a shithead. A twatweasle. A bastard. I hate you so much."  
She moved the phone to the other hand, so she could wipe her running eyes and nose.  
"I know," he answered and she could hear this smile in his voice.  
She heard a faint shout in the background. "John?" she asked urgently. "Where are you?"  
"I have to go," he said.  
"John – "  
"I won't leave you behind, Quinn. I'll come back for you. Do you hear me?"  
"But John – "

The phone went dead. She held it in her hands, staring at it till the screen went black.

"Are you okay?" Muriel asked. It was chilly outside, a fresh late-spring day, but she suspected Annika's eyes and nose weren't red with cold.  
"Fine;" she said brightly. "Just coming back inside now."  
"Was everything okay with your friend?" Muriel asked delicately. The other woman hesitated.  
"Yes," she said. "It was just an unexpected call, I guess you could say."  
Her boss nodded and handed her a box of paperbacks to go in their 'Top Ten' section.  
"I hope he's all right," Muriel said, probing.  
Annika bit her lip, then smiled.  
"He just rang to ask a favour," she said.

 _If you have read all the way to here, the end, thank you very much. I appreciated the views and the messages. Any requests for further adventures? Just leave a comment below ;-)_


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